Following yesterday’s live Flashback game is another Semi-Final tie, this time from the 2015/16 season. The game in question is the first leg of the Semi-Final clash between two Finnish clubs –Kärpät Oulu and Lukko Rauma. Will one team pull ahead of the other, or will it be a cautious game of push and pull? Catch the game live tonight!
Kärpät Oulu, one of the strongest teams in the Finnish Liiga, entered the 2015/16 CHL season off the back of their second Liiga Championship in a row. As one of the founding teams of the Champions Hockey League, Kärpät also got their first taste of the European competition in 2014/15. They battled their way to the Semi-Finals, but narrowly missed out on a spot in the Finals to the Frölunda Indians. With all this experience and winning pedigree behind them, it’s no surprise that Kärpät hit the ground running in 2015/16. They won all four of their Group Stage games without breaking a sweat and comfortably dispatched Düsseldorfer EG in the Round of 32, winning the first leg 2:0 and the second leg 3:0.
But there was trouble ahead for the Finnish Champions – in the first leg of their Round of 16 clash with Sparta Prague, an unbeaten Kärpät unexpectedly lost 4-2. Despite the result, Kärpät kept it together and were prepared to fight back when the return leg rolled around. They went up 3-1 at the beginning of the first period and just a single goal was between them and the next elimination round. They kept hitting the Czech team with shot after shot until finally, just 45 seconds before the final buzzer, the puck hit the back of the net and propelled Kärpät onto the Quarter-Finals.
There it was a similar story. They lost the first game against fellow Liiga club the Espoo Blues 2-0 but pulled off an impressive 5-1 comeback at home to win the series and advance to the Semi-Finals where they would finally meet Lukko Rauma, one of their toughest opponents of the season.
Lukko Rauma can easily be forgotten in the shadows when compared to the might of Kärpät but make no mistake – they have it where it counts. Prior to the 2015/16 CHL season, Lukko had made it into the top four of the Liiga Playoffs four times in the last five seasons, proving just how well they cope with on-the-edge elimination ice hockey. But their CHL season got off to a mediocre start – they won two and lost two games to finish second in their group but managed to secure Playoffs qualification. In the Round of 32 they were matched against Red Bull Munich, a scary opponent on paper. But this was where all those years of intense playoff experience from Liiga really gave them the edge, as they comfortably won both home and away and moved on to the next round.
Here they faced another tough opponent – Swedish club Djurgården Stockholm, but once again Lukko managed. They won the first leg 2-1, scoring the game-winning goal in the final minutes of the game, and won the second leg 2-1, once again pulling off a late win in the final minutes. The Quarter-Finals lined up a familiar opponent for Lukko – TPS Turku. Lukko had already got the better of Turku the year prior when they eliminated them in the Round of 16, but after a 3-3 draw in the first leg of their 2015/16 rematch, it could be anyone’s game. The return leg ended with another draw in regulation and went all the way to a shootout where Lukko once again got the better of Turku. This meant that Lukko qualified for the Semi-Finals unbeaten in the Playoffs and bested their Quarter-Finals finish from the year prior.
Both teams knew how critical results from the first leg can turn out to be in the Semi-Finals and were preparing to go all out to get that ever so important win, but will anyone end the night on a happy note ? Or will Kärpät and Lukko leave it all resting on the return leg in Oulu? Tune in live tonight at 19:00 to find out!