The memory of last week's Champions Hockey League Final is still live and vivid. The packed Patinoire des Vernets in Switzerland's Geneva hosted home team Genève-Servette and visitors Skellefteå AIK for the biggest game of the 2023/24 season with the entire European hockey community watching on.
The result? We think you already know by now.
Apart from a hard-fought win for Genève, who only won their first national title in 118 years last season, the crowning of a Swiss Champion in CHL Final 2024 broke a string of European Club Champions coming from the Nordics that goes all the way back to the inaugural season of 2014/15.
Despite each and every Final of the pan-European competition featuring at least one Scandinavian team (a record still running given Skellefteå's appearance in this year's Final), a few clubs have come close to breaking the Nordic dominance in the past - most notably Czech Extraliga side Sparta Prague (who will return to the CHL fold for 2024/25) in the 2016/17 Final where they lost in OT to four-time CHL Champions Frölunda Gothenburg.
But it's taken nine full seasons for the European Trophy to finally head into the heart of Europe.
CHL Final 2024 was also the very first time a Swiss team have played in a European Final in our 9-season history (2020/21 was called off due to the global COVID-19 pandemic). Right about now, all the ZSC Lions Zurich will be screaming at their screens noting how we've forgotten their 2008/09 win in the one-and-only season of the previous Champions Hockey League competition. We haven't, but our history started in our very first season which was in 2014/15.
Genève's success hasn't come out of the blue and isn't a surprise for anyone who follows Swiss hockey. The National League teams have been investing, developing and attracting star players for some seasons now and we've witnessed it in the Champions Hockey League.
Don't forget, EV Zug missed out on a spot in last season's Final to eventual Champions Tappara Tampere and the fact that all three Swiss teams in our 2023/24 line-up made the Playoffs, with two of them making the Top 8, was a big success that hasn't always been the case in the past.
We don't see this is a one-season wonder story, but rather a culmination of something that's been coming for some time now, as a chapter of Swedish (and Finnish) dominance may be coming to an end on Europe's biggest club ice hockey stage.
But with the 2024/25 line-up slowly starting to take shape, everything is possible next season as we approach our 10-season anniversary!
Who would you like to see lift the European Trophy next year?