Elite Women's Hockey League
The Elite Women's Hockey League ( short EWHL ) is a multinational woman Hockey League, which was founded by the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF in 2004 after the model of the Inter League and their participating countries lie mainly in Central Europe.
History
The league was founded by the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF in 2004 after the model of the Inter League, a multinational league in Mr. Hockey. In their first season started with eight participants from Austria, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia. Alone Austria, the EWHL games from the beginning built to compete in the national championship, put half the participants. Thus secured with the EHV Sabres Wien also an Austrian club their first league title.
In the following three years were joined by other teams from other Central European countries. With the accession of Slovakia to the 2005/06 season, Croatia for 2006/ 07 and the Czech Republic to the game year 2007/ 08 the number of participating countries increased within three years to seven. This was accompanied by an increase in the number of participants that their peak reached in the 2006/07 season with twelve teams. The championship titles between 2006 and 2009 shared the HC Slovan Bratislava in Slovakia and the HC Slavia Prague in the Czech Republic.
From the 2008/ 09 season, the number of participants declined sharply, although Germany was the first time represented by two teams in the competition. In the following season won with the ESC Planegg / Würmtal also the first time a German team the title. With only six participants, however, were distributed among five different countries, the league reached a low in this regard. To the Game 2010 /11, the number of participants increased again to eight. Among the new teams was the Dutch women's team. The championship was won by the EHV Sabres Wien, seven years after his first title win.
Mode
In general, the competition will be conducted in the league system, whereby the teams determined the champion in a forward and reverse turn. A win is a team receives three points for a win after extra two points. However, the losing team received after the regular season no points for a defeat after extra one point.
Only in the 2005/06 season, the team first played in two divisions of a qualification and then in a playoff round of the Masters. In the season 2010/11, a similar mode was pursued. After a qualifying round, the top four teams determined in a two-day finals of the Masters.