Pro Hockey Resume

By Helsingin Sanomat – Finland

HIFK Helsinki only capital area team left in hockey playoffs

The clocks went forward an hour on Sunday to mark the beginning of summer time, even though it seems grotesquely early amidst all the snow still lying on the ground.

Summer also came uncomfortably early for fans of Helsinki Jokerit and Espoo Blues, as their involvement in the SM-Liiga hockey playoffs ended rather predictably at the first hurdle on Friday evening.

The so-called “wild card” round of the playoffs (also somewhat unkindly referred to as the “charity playoffs”), leading to the quarter-finals, proved to be too much for both the capital area teams.

Jokerit went down 4-2 to Tappara in Tampere, and Blues lost 2-1 at home to Kärpät of Oulu.
There was a certain continuity about the Blues defeat – Kärpät have knocked them out of the competition at various stages during the last five seasons.

As for Jokerit, they only scraped into the playoffs at the last moment and have not looked like world-beaters at any stage during the past campaign.

The weekend’s two winners will go forward to the quarter-finals and to tough encounters with the regular season winner JYP of Jyväskyla and runner-up KalPa from Kuopio.

The pairings for the last eight (with places in the semi-finals to be decided on a best-of-seven matches principle) are as follows:
JYP vs. Kärpät
KalPa vs. Tappara
Rauma Lukko vs. TPS Turku
HIFK Helsinki vs. HPK Hämeenlinna
HIFK are thus the only team from the capital area still in the competition.

By: Helsingin Sanomat – Finland

SM-Liiga regular season honours again go to JYP of Jyväskylä

Tuesday saw the first round of play-off matches towards the Finnish ice hockey championship final, which will decide the owners for another year of the Canada Trophy, currently held by JYP of Jyväskylä.

The first round is a kind of “wild card” preliminary stage to find two teams from four to go forward to the quarter-finals.

The four teams obliged to take an extra step are those that settled between 7th and 10th in the final standings after the regular SM-Liiga season ended last weekend.

Tappara of Tampere finished 7th and were matched against the 10th-place side Helsinki Jokerit, while 8th-placed Blues from Espoo faced Oulu Kärpät. The higher-ranked team had home advantage in the best-of-three series.

Unfortunately for Blues, home advantage seemed not to have been much use: they went down rather tamely 2-3 in Espoo and will be facing an early exit from the proceedings if the Oulu team can win again on Thursday.
It must have seemed like déjà vu all over again for Blues – Kärpät beat them in the final in 2008, in the semi-finals in 2009 and 2007, and in the quarters in 2006.

Helsinki Jokerit only scraped into the top ten and over the play-offs line in the very last round of the regular season, but they, too, look like paying only a short visit to the play-offs.

Tappara took the first game 5-3. Jokerit will host the Tampere side on Thursday, but even if they win that game, they will have to go back to Tampere for a third match on the 26th.

The next stage will be the quarter-finals proper, in which the top six teams from the SM-Liiga table are joined by the two “wild card” round winners.

At that stage, some of the pairings are already determined: Rauma Lukko (3rd in the regular season) will meet TPS Turku (6th), and HIFK Helsinki (4th) will play HPK from Hämeenlinna (5th). The regular season winners JYP from Jyväskylä and runners-up KalPa of Kuopio will play the winners of the “wild card” encounters.

At this stage neither JYP nor KalPa know their opponents, not just because the matches are still in progress, but since the arrangement is that JYP will automatically get to play the “weaker” of the two candidates, based on their standing in the regular season.

The quarter-finals will be based on a best-of-seven principle, with the higher-ranked of the teams enjoying home advantage in the first match (and thus potentially also in the deciding seventh game).

This year’s regular season saw a repeat of 2008/2009 in that JYP took top honours, although this time around it was neck-and-neck between Lukko, KalPa and JYP for a long while, and only four points separated these three teams after 58 games.

Last year JYP also went on to win the Canada Trophy for the first time in the club’s history, beating Kärpät comprehensively in the final.

At the other end of the league table, Ilves from Tampere (holders of 16 Finnish championships in their history) were doomed long before the 2009/10 season came to an end, and they will have to win a best-of-seven series against Jokipojat of Joensuu (winners of the 1st Division title) in order to hang on to their place in the top flight.

These life-or-death games begin on March 30th.