2016–17 Champions Hockey League

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The 2016–17 Champions Hockey League is the third season of the Champions Hockey League, a European ice hockey tournament launched by 26 founding clubs, six leagues and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). The group stage will begin on 16 August 2016, with the one-game Final being played on 7 February 2017.

Team allocation

A total of 48 teams from different European first-tier leagues will participate in the 2016–17 Champions Hockey League.

Team license

The teams will be decided with regards to different licenses for the founding teams, leagues and wildcards.^[1]

A license: The 26 founding teams get an A license, if they play in the first-tier league of their respective domestic league system in the 2016–17 season.
B license: Two teams – the regular-season winner and the play-off champion in the 2014–15 season – from each of the founding leagues (the Austrian EBEL, the Czech Extraliga, the Finnish Liiga, the German DEL, the Swedish SHL and the Swiss NLA) will receive a B licence to the tournament. If those teams had already received an A license, other teams from the league will take the B license spots. The order the B licenses were handed out is:^[2]^[3]

National champion
Regular season winner
Runner-up, regular season
Play-off finalist
Best placed semifinal loser
Worst placed semifinal loser

C license: There will be 10 wild cards. The champions from Norway, Slovakia, Belarus, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom and Poland will get wild cards. From Norway and Slovakia a second team, the regular season winner, will also get a wild card. One wild card license will be assigned to the 2015–16 IIHF Continental Cup winner Dragons de Rouen.^[4]^[5]

Teams

Notes:

‡ – Ligue Magnus champion Dragons de Rouen had already qualified via Continental Cup.

Group stage

Minsk
(not on map)

Teams in the 2016–17 Champions Hockey League.

Blue: A-license;

Red: B-license;

Yellow: C-license.

The format remains the same as in previous season. The group stage began on 18 August (16 August for Swiss teams) and finish on 11 September 2016. The 48 teams were divided into 16 groups of three teams each. Each team played a double round-robin in their group, facing each team at home and on the road, giving 4 games per team. The 16 group winners and the 16 runners-up qualified for the playoffs.

Group stage draw

The 16 groups were determined by a draw taking place on 3 May 2016 in Zurich, Switzerland. The 48 teams had been ranked and placed into three pots of 16 teams each. Following the draw, each group consisted of one team from each pot. The seedings were as follows:^[6]

Pot 1	Pot 2	Pot 3
Frölunda HC Tappara Bílí Tygři Liberec SC Bern Red Bull München Red Bull Salzburg Skellefteå AIK HIFK Sparta Prague ZSC Lions Luleå Hockey Oulun Kärpät HC Plzeň HC Davos Växjö Lakers JYP	BK Mladá Boleslav HC Lugano Linköpings HC SaiPa Vítkovice Steel EV Zug Färjestad BK Lukko Dynamo Pardubice Fribourg-Gottéron Djurgårdens IF TPS HV71 KalPa HK Nitra HC Košice	Eisbären Berlin Orli Znojmo Grizzlys Wolfsburg Vienna Capitals ERC Ingolstadt Black Wings Linz Adler Mannheim Krefeld Pinguine Stavanger Oilers Esbjerg Energy Yunost Minsk Dragons de Rouen Sheffield Steelers ComArch Cracovia Lørenskog IK Rapaces de Gap