LNH
Current season, competition or edition: LNH 11 | |
| Sport | Ice Hockey |
|---|---|
| Commissioner | Jean-Luc Anger |
| No. of teams | 18 |
| Country | Lisander |
| Most recent champion(s) | Beaumont Wolves |
| Most titles | Kasandora Blues (2 titles) |
| Official website | lnh.ls |
The Liga Nacional de Hóquei (LNH) is the premier professional ice hockey league in Lisander, serving as the pinnacle of the sport's competitive structure. While ice hockey has deep historical roots in the alpine and mountainous regions of Northern Lisander, in cities like Salinas, Beaumont, and Dalena, the LNH has successfully expanded into the south of the country through the popularization of indoor arenas.
Structure and Format
The league currently consists of 18 teams divided into Northern and Southern divisions.Due to questions relative to weather, stadium usage and rule interpretation differences between northern and southern teams, the LNH format varies constantly. However, the most usual system is that competition follows a double round-robin format, culminating in a conference playoff system, where the winners of each side face off for the Harmin Cup.
- Regular Season: Double Round-Robin, Home and Away Matches.
- Playoffs: Single match per round. From Conference Finals, always in neutral venues.
- Harmin Cup: Single match, always in a neutral venue.
Extra Goal Rule
For purposes of the qualification table, overtime wins and losses aren't counted, and a win in Shoot-out counts as an extra goal. So if a game ties 3-3 after three periods and overtime, the winner of the Shoot-out gets an extra goal on the match result (it becomes a 4-3).
The Expansion Quota
Conference-based playoffs created a new term in LNH. Since southern teams are, in average, worse than northern teams, it isn't common that the fourth-placed team in Southern Conference might qualify with a regular season result worse than the fifth or even sixth-placed team in the Northern Conference. It happened in LNH 6 and LNH 7. Northern teams usually feel this qualifying system is not fair to them, and call this fourth spot Expansion Quota or Sellout Seed, since contrary to the northern, the southern teams are more “commercial franchises” than “hockey clubs”.
Teams
The LNH underwent a period of rapid growth between its 6th and 8th seasons, expanding from a small 8-team circuit to its current professional scale.