The Spengler Cup Invitational Hockey Tournament in Davos, Switzerland

The Spengler Cup is an invitational ice hockey tournament that is held in Davos, Switzerland each year between Christmas and New Year’s. The trophy donated by Doctor Carl Spengler of Davos was awarded for the first time in 1923. That year it was awarded to Oxford University, a team that had Lester B. Pearson on the roster. Pearson would later become Prime Minister of Canada.

The modern tournament consists of five teams each playing one game against the other four teams in a round-robin format. The top two teams at the end of the round-robin compete in a single play-off to determine the champion.

HC Davos, the host team and member of Switzerland’s National-A League, competes each year. Team Canada also competes every year with a roster filled with Canadians playing professionally in Europe. The other three teams vary from year to year. Often, the teams are from Germany, Russia and the Czech Republic.

The team qualification rules are slightly controversial. Team Canada is basically a select team. Therefore, a rule was implemented that the other club teams that enter the tournament can bolster their rosters with six non-club players. The only team that successfully does this, however, is the host, HC Davos, giving them at times an unfair advantage.

HC Davos has won the tournament 14 times, the first being in 1927. There have been four years when the tournament was not held, 1939, 1940, 1949 and 1956. HC Davos did not appear in the 1967 and 1968 tournaments and were instead replaced by a Swiss national team. They also did not compete in 1990, 1991 and 1992 and were replaced by other Swiss club teams.

The reigning champion is Dinamo Minsk. Dinamo Minsk competes in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). They won the 2009 tournament with a victory over the host HC Davos.

Teams from Japan, Poland, Canada, Great Britain, United States, Russia, Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Slovakia, France, Italy and Switzerland have competed in the tournament through the years while teams from Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Italy, France, Russia, Canada, United States and Sweden have won the tournament.

The other two teams that competed in 2009 were Adler Mannheim from Germany’s Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) and HC Energie Karlovy Vary from the Czech Republic’s O2 Extraliga. As of yet, the teams for the 2010 tournament have not been announced.

Spengler Cup official website.

Spengler Cup on Wikipedia.

HC Davos official website.