The Arena Ritten will host the 2017 IIHF Continental Cup Final. Photo: Max Pattis
Continental Cup venue decided
The 2017 IIHF Continental Cup Final will take place in Ritten. The bid from Italy was selected among several applicants.
The tournament will be hosted from 13th to 15th January in Ritten, a town near Bolzano in the northern Italian region of South Tyrol.
The IIHF has reviewed the hosting applications and considered the ranking of all qualified teams after the semi-final tournaments, the standard of previous organizations, arenas, accommodation situation as well as the proposed tournament dates since not all applicants had their venue available for the originally agreed dates of 13-15 January.
Ritten Sport is a second-time participant in the Continental Cup but already successfully hosted two semi-final events in 2014 and 2016 and qualified for the final tournament for the first time. It will be the second time that the Continental Cup Final will take place in Italy after 2003 when Milan co-hosted the event with Lugano, Switzerland.
The finalists battling for the Continental Cup are host Ritten Sport, the Nottingham Panthers from Great Britain, Kazakh champion Beibarys Atyrau and the Odense Bulldogs from Denmark who qualified through the semi-final tournaments in November. The game schedule will be announced soon.
The winner of the 2017 IIHF Continental Cup will get the chance to play in the Champions Hockey League 2017/2018 pending formal approval by the CHL board as it was the case with the last three winners – the Stavanger Oilers from Norway in 2014, Neman Grodno from Belarus in 2015 and the Rouen Dragons from France in 2016.
The 2016/2017 season is the Continental Cup’s 20-year-anniversary season. Click on the right or here for a video looking back at the past winners.