The Canadian Premier League Shield or CPL Shield is a trophy awarded annually to the Canadian Premier League (CPL) club with the best regular season finish. Although this award does not signify a league championship, as that is decided during the Canadian Premier League Finals, the winning team is awarded an equal monetary prize to the eventual playoff champions, and a berth in the next season’s CONCACAF Champions Cup.[1]
At the end of the 2022 Canadian Premier League season, the league announced that they would begin to recognize the regular season accomplishments of its member clubs to have more similarity with soccer competitions around the world, which put less emphasis on post-season results.[2] At the time, the Canadian Premier League did not recognize a regular season winner. The CPL Shield was first unveiled near the end of the 2023 Canadian Premier League regular season.[3][4]Cavalry FC were the first team to hoist the trophy following their 2023 regular season championship. The CPL Shield was also awarded retroactively to the clubs with the best regular season records from all previous seasons, meaning that Cavalry FC were also the first de-facto winners of the trophy for their first place finish in the inaugural 2019 season. Due to the unconventional format used for a shortened season in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the league did not retroactively award the trophy to any team for that year.[5]
The trophy is a silver shield measuring about 46 centimetres in diameter and weighing nine kilograms. The CPL Shield has 13 edges to represent each of the provinces and territories of Canada and features a gold CPL logo (which is a stylized maple leaf) in the centre.[3] The trophy sits on a removable wooden base.
Before the Canadian Premier League's inauguration in 2019, the Canadian Soccer Association had sanctioned two other division 1 leagues in Canada, the Canadian Professional Soccer League in 1983, and the Canadian Soccer League from 1987 to 1992. Neither league officially recognized the team that finished the regular season with the most points. For reference, this is a list of teams that finished with the best regular season record in a Canadian 1st division league prior to 2019.
^Although Forge was the regular season champion in 2021, they qualified to the Champions League due to their placement in the 2021 CONCACAF League, as the CPL Shield berth was only first awarded in 2023.[6]
^Two teams folded midway through the season, leaving the league with four teams, and causing teams to play an unequal amount of matches. Teams that remained active until the end of the season played between 10 and 13 regular season games. Despite playing the lowest amount of games for a surviving team, Edmonton still won the most points.
Tommy Wheeldon Jr.
Bobby Smyrniotis
Carlos González
Ontario
Alberta
Dieter Hochheimer
