The Euro Hockey Tour (EHT) is an annual

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tournament open to only the national men's teams of

Czechia The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The Cz ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

and

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

. Most of the teams use the competition as a preparation for the upcoming

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, allowing less experienced players to collect valuable ice time in their

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History

Playing format

Euro Hockey Tour consists of four tournaments: *

Karjala Tournament The Karjala Tournament ( fi, Karjala-turnaus), also known as Karjala Cup, is an annual ice hockey event held in Finland. The name comes from the sponsoring beer brand Karjala. History The tournament started in 1992 as the Sauna Cup. In 1995, t ...

* Swiss Ice Hockey Games in

, replacing the Channel One Cup in

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following the

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* Sweden Hockey Games in

* Czech Hockey Games in

Each team plays three games in each of the tournaments, giving a total of twelve games per team. After the four tournaments have finished, the teams are seeded according to their respective combined point total from all four tournaments. In each tournament, five games are played in the host city, and one game in another participating country. For example, in the 2007 edition of Karjala Tournament, the game between Sweden and Russia was played in

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, Sweden, rather than in Finland, who host the Karjala Cup. Every country is assigned one home game and one away game in those games. Each team is given three points for a regulation-time win, two points for an

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win, one point for a loss in overtime or shootout, and zero points for a loss in regulation time. In the four tournaments, if two or more teams end with the same number of points, they are seeded based on head-to-head results in games against the tied teams. In the EHT standings however, two or more teams tied in points are seeded based on the better

goal difference Goal difference, goal differential or points difference is a form of tiebreaker used to rank sport teams which finish on equal points in a league competition. Either "goal difference" or "points difference" is used, depending on whether matches a ...

Prize money

The prize money for the winner of each tournament is

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50,000 while the second seed gets €30,000, the third seed gets €25,000, and the fourth seed gets €15,000. The EHT season winner receives another €75,000, the team finishing second gets €30,000, and the team finishing third gets €15,000.

Finals in previous years

Medal games were not played until the 2003–04 season. Before that, place order was determined by the tournament standings. The seasons 2003–04, 2004–05 and 2006–07 used a format where the first-placed and second-placed teams played a home-and-home two-game series for the EHT gold and silver medals, while the third-placed and fourth-placed teams played two games for the bronze. In 2005–06, the championship was determined by a single game played at the home of the first-place team. Since 2007–08, no EHT finals have been played.

Participating teams

Four European teams compete in EHT. Czechia, Finland, and Sweden have participated since the tournament was started in 1996. Switzerland replaced Russia in the spring of 2022 after the Russian team was suspended from participation in international tournaments due to the military invasion of Ukraine * * * *

Results

Medal table

References

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