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The Champions Hockey League 2023/24 prediction game is now open for registration. You can sign up here.

Worth noting: there is a change of format this year. There will be no groups, no. of participants reduced from 32 to 24. Just one aggregated table but each team will play only 6 games against 6 different opponents according to a specified pots-based allocation formula.

I think I haven't come across a similar concept in the past for any of the sports. Top-16 after 6 gameweeks will qualify for the playoffs.

European Rugby Champions Cup used a similar format this year (with two groups) and I read some time ago that this will also be the future format of the UEFA Champions League.

Good to know. If that's the future of some comps I think I need to dig a bit more into the allocation mechanism.

I thought at the beginning that this would be more of a standard group allocation (where teams actually play within their groups, only that the results are put in one aggregated table). But with 6 gameweeks, not 5, it seems not to be the case with 24 teams.

I think I haven't come across a similar concept in the past for any of the sports. Top-16 after 6 gameweeks will qualify for the playoffs.
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If you try to pick out the key points of the new CHL format you'll see - there is no principle differences from the current NBA format (for example):

1) Two stages - a regular season and a playoff;
2) Each team could play with any other league team in a regular season (0..1 games in CHL, 2..4 games in NBA);
3) An equal number of home and away games in a regular season (3=3 in CHL and 41=41 in NBA);
4) There is only 1 aggregate table defining play-off places in CHL instead of 2 tables in NBA.

So there is only a quantitative difference between them.

But here you don't play against as many as 17 teams out of 23, yet the table is aggregated. In NBA you play every other team in the table at least once if I am correct, which is, at least intuitively, a better justification to have the table aggregated?

So what does your point (2) refer to precisely?

So what does your point (2) refer to precisely?
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This point confirms one of the selected principle - in a regular season each team could play with any other league team - there are no preliminary restrictions caused by their belonging to any subsets (groups, divisions etc.)