Brynäs IF made light work of Polish champions Comarch Cracovia with a routine win on Sunday afternoon.
The hosts were favourite to win and were on the front foot from the opening faceoff, taking the lead with only 2:35 played through Jonathan Granström. With 15:36 played, a super pass from Jesper Boqvist found Aaron Palushaj, who calmly slotted past Rafal Radziszewski to double the lead.
Into the second period, and after a defensive mix-up on the attacking blueline, Brynäs recovered to eventually get the puck to Linus Ölund, whose wrist shot came off Rafał Radziszewski's glove and dropped into the net at 27:51. Four became five when Lucas Carlsson banged home a rebound at 37:34, and then with 1:08 to play Ölund scored again as his backhanded effort deflected in off a defenceman.
In the final period, Louie Caporusso extended the lead to 6-0 with 46:44 on the board, then Danish international Jesper Jensen found the five-hole to make it seven with just under eight minutes to play and, finally, a second from Caporusso made it eight just under a minute and a half later.
“Coming here, we were trying to keep the score 0-0 for as long as possible, create some opportunities, keep the mistakes to a minimum and see what happens. I don’t think we played so bad, but whenever we made a small mistake they scored right away. A lot of our guys don’t have experience playing a team of this calibre, and this was an eye-opener. We can learn from this and we’ll play them again at home, and that will be a new game.”Teddy DaCosta, forward, Comarch Cracovia