Niinimaa plays for Finland

In the middle of November there are no games played in the European Hockey leagues because during this period several tournaments for national teams take place on the continent. The Karjala Cup in Helsinki, which is hosted by the national team of Finland, involves besides the national teams of Russia, Sweden and Czech Republic. And at Deutschland Cup in Hannover teams like Germany, Denmark, Japan, Slovakia, USA and Switzerland fight with each other for the win. Both tournaments host a great number of international players and many of these Superstars will be playing at forthcoming Spengler Cup in Davos.

International players at Karjala Cup with an invitation to the Spengler Cup are the Finnish player Janne Niinimaa (HC Davos), Russian players Vladimir Antipov, Alexander Eremenko, Andrei Kutejkin, Alexander Perezhogin and Alexei Tereshenko (Salavat Yulaev Ufa) as well as Miroslav Blatak (Salavat Yulaev Ufa) and Tomas Rolinek (HC Möller Pardubice) both from Czech Republic.

International players at Deutschland Cup with an invitation to the Spengler Cup are German players Martin Ancicka, Michael Hackert and Christoph Ullmann from Adler Mannheim, Swiss players Andres Ambühl, Florian Blatter, Dario Bürgler and Peter Guggisberg from HC Davos and furthermore Jan Lasak and Radovan Somik from HC Möller Pardubice who both play for the Slovakian national team. And for the US-Team the Adler-players Adam Hauser as well as Blake Sloan are on duty in Hanover and a few weeks later in Davos too.

Just before the beginnings of the international tournaments in Helsinki and Hannover the team of Adler Mannheim could win a national league match three times in a row. But after 21 games they find themselves still just on the ninth position in the table which is very inconsistent with the declared claims and goals. Even worse is the situation of the Czech team HC Möller Pardubice. After a horrible start into the new season in Czech league with several defeats the team's performance has begun to improve a few weeks ago. 21 points after 19 games is still a bad and unexpected result.

On the other hand the two Spengler Cup teams from Davos and Salavat Yulaev are riding on a real wave of success in their national leagues. Davos hold at the moment the third place in the Swiss national league and the gap to the leader from Berne is just two points. The most successful team in Russia is currently the HC Salavat Yulaev. The team has won 56 points in 24 matches and the club is the head of the championship table with a 3-point-lead.