This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Spengler Cup. Hockey teams played for the trophy donated by Dr. Carl Spengler for the first time in 1923. The magic and euphoria surrounding the tournament are still unbroken today. The first seven players will be inducted into the new Spengler Cup Hall of Fame during Boxing Week 2023.

Already in the years 1920 to 1922 Dr. Paul Muller had organized match-ups with foreign teams in Davos. Then Dr. Carl Spengler, who was also working as a surgeon, donated the precious challenge cup for the 1923 tournament, and the Spengler Cup, which then was still called “International Ice Hockey Championship Davos”, was born.

Worldwide presence
Even 100 years after the founding tournament, the organizing committee has been able to withstand hard times, bring together athletes and sport enthusiasts of various nations, and in doing so build bridges. The Spengler Cup has not lost any of its great appeal for ice hockey fans and has a worldwide presence thanks to the media. The participating teams gladly come to Davos. For many players the tournament belongs to the highlights of their careers and they still rave about their trip to the Landwasser Valley years later.
Every year sports fans from across Europe travel to the tournament during Boxing Week to support their teams and to enjoy the magic that comes upon Davos in those days. If a visit to the one-of-a-kind Eisstadion is not in the books, the Spengler Cup with its first-class field of participants has been a fixed part of the television entertainment program between Christmas and New Year for young and old. In all the years since its founding the Spengler Cup has lost none of its fascination and charisma.

100 years Spengler Cup exhibition and Spengler Cup Hall of Fame at Eisstadion Davos
Eisstadion Davos will host a new museum section of the 100-year history of the Spengler Cup. This will be opened to match visitors in the spectator corridor on December 26, 2023. Right beside it is the Spengler Cup Hall of Fame, in which the first players and officials will be inducted on December 29, 2023.

50 players and nine officials figure on the shortlist of the Spengler Cup Hall of Fame (HoF). In six stages, starting in 2023 (100-year anniversary of the first Spengler Cup) until 2028 (100th edition of the Spengler Cup) a number of players, which have helped shape Spengler Cup history and the world of hockey in a meaningful way, will be honoured yearly in chronological order. For their selection process the HoF working group, the HoF commission, and the board of directors emphasized that players from different eras, various hockey cultures as well as forwards, defensemen, and goaltenders were considered without overly relying on fixed metrics. The first seven players will be inducted into the HoF on December 29, 2023. All of them were pioneers that ignited the Spengler Cup’s initiation phase in the Golden 1920’s and, within short time, moved the tournament into the epicentre of world ice hockey.
Together with the players of the 1920s, the nine most influential officials of the entire 100-year Spengler Cup history will be honoured on December 29, 2023, as well. During Boxing Week 2024 eight players, which left their marks on the second phase of the tournament’s history (1930 to 1949), will then be honoured. The process is continued yearly in this fashion until 2028 when eleven players, who dominated the sixth tournament phase (since 2007), will be honoured.

Quelle: Spengler Cup-Onlineredaktion Bild: Archiv Spengler Cup