Luleå Hockey’s comeback in the Return Game of their 2014/15 Round of 16 against Red Bull Salzburg still stands as one of the greatest in Champions Hockey League history. The entire course of the tournament could have looked very different had the Swedes not done what they did in those final two periods at the Eisarena Salzburg!
Red Bull, who had won their group ahead of heavyweights JYP Jyväskylä and HV71 Jönköping, carried on their good form in the competition with a 4-2 win in Luleå in the First Leg, and only a late Daniel Zaar goal had got the hosts back to within two heading to Austria. Back at home, three goals inside the first 11 minutes put the Austrians five clear on aggregate, and while Niklas Fogström pulled one back for the visitors, David Meckler made it 4-1 on the night and 8-3 on aggregate by the end of the first period.
And then it happened. Stephen Dixon, who'd go on to play for Cardiff in the CHL, started Luleå's comeback 7:05 into period two, and by 35:29 of the game teammates Per Ledin, Lennart Petrell, Fogström again and the aforementioned Zaar had all found the net to bring the score to an incredibly 8-8 on aggregate! Zaar's go-ahead goal for the Swedes with ten minutes to play looked to have completed the turnaround, only for Thomas Raffl to tie the game with 1:55 to go. Overtime produced no winner, and so it was down to Fogström to score the shootout decider - technically completing a hat-trick - to send Luleå through in a remarkable game.
“The coolest game I played with Luleå was in Salzburg,” recalled Dixon earlier this summer. “I remember it well, especially because my parents were travelling in Europe at that time and came to watch and couldn’t believe what they’d seen! It was definitely the craziest game I’ve ever been involved in!”.
“Being down after the first period left a very irritated atmosphere in the locker room and when we found out that Salzburg had already started to sell tickets for the next playoff round, it really helped us find the extra energy to show them we weren't done yet” revealed Karl Fabricius some years later!