Cardiff Devils Ready For Champions Hockey League Draw

Cardiff Devils are in Cologne for the 2017-18 Champions Hockey League draw.

Managing director Todd Kelman and coach Andrew Lord will find out which three teams Elite League champions Devils will face in the European competition.

The group stage draw takes place at the Lanxess Arena, Cologne at 3pm UK time and can be followed on a lifestream at www.championshockeyleague.com.

Guests for the broadcast, live on the CHL website and Facebook, are coaches Sean Simpson (Adler Mannheim) and Kari Jalonen (SC Bern) plus CHL chairman Anders Ternbom and chief executive Martin Baumann.

There will be four pots, each with eight teams in ranking order, and the draw will place each team in a group.

Clubs from the same league cannot be drawn into the same group

The Group Stage starts on August 24 and finishes on October 11.

The 32 teams are divided into eight groups of four and each plays six games, one home and one away against the other three teams in its group.

The first and second placed teams in each group then advance to the playoff stage.

Cardiff Devils are seeded 29th and are in pot four along with Nottingham Panthers. The top seeds are reigning champions Frolunda Gothenburg from Sweden.

Winners and runners-up in each section go forward to the p;lay-off stage.

Champions Hockey League:

Pot one: Frolunda Gothenburg (Sweden), HV71 Jonkoping (Sweden), Tappara Tampere (Finland), SC Bern (Switzerland), Kometa Brno (Czech Republic), Red Bull Munich (Germany), Vienna Capitals (Austria), Vaxjo Lakers (Sweden).

Pot two: TPS Turku (Finland), ZSC Lions Zurich (Switzerland), Bili Tygri Liberec (Czech Republic), Adler Mannheim (Germany), Red Bull Salzburg (Austria), Brynas IF (Sweden), Kalpa Kuopio (Finland), EV Zug (Switzerland).

Pot three: Ocular Trinec (Czech Republic), Grizzlys Wolfsburg (Germany), KAC Klagenfurt (Austria), Malmo Redhawks (Sweden), Jyp Jyvaskyla (Finland), HC Davos (Switzerland), Mountfield HK (Czech Republic), IFK Helsinki (Finland).

Pot four: Banska Bystrica (Slovakia), Stavanger Oilers (Norway), Neman Grodno (Belarus), Esbjerg Energy (Denmark), Cardiff Devils (Great Britain), CD Gap Rapaces (France), Comarch Cracovia (Poland), Nottingham Panthers (Nottingham Panthers).