The Season Preview

26 September 2018

Created by Tornado Luxembourg

After having travelled one winter to the West last season, this season Tornado moves back to the North East group in the French 3rd division. In group C, Tornado will play Dijon, Epinal, Dammarie, Champigny, Reims, Fontenay and ACBB. The two last teams are not that familiar to us, but all the rest are more or less known.

From the past we know Epinal and Champigny as strong teams. Last season they finished 2nd and 3rd in the group whose winner, Colmar, was promoted to the 2nd division. Epinal’s League Magnus team was dissolved so it will be interesting to see if any players from there will play this season. At least during the pre-season, Epinal has proved to be strong by beating Strasbourg’s division two team.

Also Dijon’s first team has quit so there might be a stronger team than previous seasons. Reims is boosting hockey in their city and according to the preparation game against Dammarie, it seems that it is paying off, as Reims won the game 11-3.

ACBB and Fontenay were the last two teams in the group C last season. Anyway, according to their Facebook page, at least ACBB has been recruiting new players from the region of Paris.

Frist round was played last weekend and then Epinal won in Dijon 9-2, Reims in Champigny 4-2 and Dammarie smashed Fontaney with 20-6.

For this season the teams were asking for more games from the French federation. This was arranged by changing the play-offs system. After playing a double round or 14 games during the regular season, the 6 best teams will go to the first play-off round. That round is not what we are used to. The 1st and the 2nd team from the group will play against each other and decide who is the winner of the group and gain the home advance for coming rounds. Then 3rd team will play against 6th and 4th against 5th. The winner of those pairs continue to the second round.

Tornado’s roster had some changes during the summer as we have lost 7 players. Sebastian Grein moved back to Sweden, Mikael Äijälä, Steven Minden, Lukas Föhr, Jimmy Hilbert and Mickey Cannon moved to other cities due the work and studies and Kevin Grönlund decided to continue his career in Beaufort. All of these guys are heavy losses and will be missed this season, but that’s life and hockey.

Luckily there are some new comers as well. Forwards Quentin William from France, Henri Öörni and Jusse Lampsijärvi from Finland together with Canadian defender Brandon Evanoff joined the team during September. Another Finn, Patrik Hedberg, is still on try out and his situation will be decided in a week.

Another very interesting season is coming with some new faces and new teams. We hope to see you all fans in the stands this year as well and maybe you can bring some of your friends with you so this noble sport will get even more followers and keep growing even bigger in Luxembourg. #BiggerTogether