Finnish Hockey League (Liiga) has a Super Season starting but what makes it super?
Liiga is celebrating Super Season with a golden logo.
Finnish Hockey League (Liiga) has for years been effectively a closed league. Most of 2000s, there hasn't been a way to be relegated to the lower level of competition and even when there's been promotion/relegation matches, the system has been built in a way where it hasn't been realistic to happen. Last time a team was relegated was in 1999.
There have been teams that have been promoted through cabinet discussions. Liiga had strict license requirements for anyone who wanted to join and from a fan's perspective, they always felt very arbitrary and not transparent. That means it has been even harder for a team in Mestis (2nd level of competition below Liiga) to attempt to be promoted through sports efforts.
Today, we get to see the first matches of a season that's been dubbed Super Season by media and the league itself. There are more teams than ever (17) and an old power house team Helsingin Jokerit has returned to the league after their Russian trip in KHL, now with new ownership. 17 teams is too much though. More games in a similar time frame leads to drop in quality and there isn't enough players currently in Finnish system to have 17 high quality teams.
What makes this season very interesting is that Liiga decided earlier that after this season, a new system is set to place. Immediately after this season, the league will split to two: top 14 teams from this season will continue to the higher league and the bottom 3 will be relegated to a new 2nd level league to join with the best teams from current Mestis. In future years, more teams will be relegated and eventually the league will reach some amount of teams that it will stabilise to and return direct promotion and relegation that fans have been dreaming for decades.
For decades, a team that noticed they won't make it to playoffs would sell their top players elsewhere in the middle of the season and wait for the rest of the season to pass so they can try again. Last season, Vaasan Sport started this in December. When you give up before Christmas, it's a mockery of the sport.
The threat of relegation is what makes a league like this exciting. Every match matters and nobody can throw in the towel before the last game. With three teams being delegated, the threat is even bigger as it's not enough to beat just one team.
My team, TPS, is a strong candidate to be one of the disappointments that will be relegated. TPS is one of the historically big teams in Finland but the recent years have been sad to follow. I really hope that the situation we're in forces them to fix things and hopefully that will elevate them to new heights and back to the years of glory.