In this year's Champions Hockey League Final, Luleå Hockey prevailed with a 4–2 home-ice victory over Frölunda Gothenburg. Now they meet again in the SHL quarter-finals. That being the case, everyone is anticipating a hard-fought and emotional series.  

by Efraim Larsson

GOTHENBURG – The Scandinavium arena is set for playoff party, Section 84 (one of the supporter groups of Frölunda) has spent hours painting, planning and preparing for a playoff tilt, and the back-and-forth posturing between the fans of the two teams has already started.

Tonight, Thursday at 18:30 CET, is when the teams hit the ice and the series gets underway. 

Last year, Frölunda Gothenburg finished the SHL regular schedule in second place and were expected to be the biggest challenger to Skellefteå AIK in the chase for the Le Mat Trophy for the league championship. Instead, the trip and season ended early, in the quarter-finals, when Linköping HC were too strong for them.

Now, with a second-straight second-place finish in the regular season, the young squad from Gothenburg wants to break the pattern.

“It will be a great fight between two teams that always play at their best,” young star Andreas Johnson said to Johan Rylander of Göteborgs-Posten. He continued, “I think that we’ve shown ourselves and everyone else all season long that we have a well-composed team with four lines that all can step forward and determine a game. The fact that we’ll face Luleå after the CHL Final is just some extra fuel to the fire. We won’t make the same mistake twice!”

Johnson was the second-highest point scorer in the CHL with 25 points (11 goals + 14 assists) in 12 games, only beaten by teammate Mathis Olimb. His 11 goals made him the top goal-scorer in the tournament, three ahead of the trio of Greg Mauldin (Fribourg-Gottéron), Joonas Donskoi (Kärpät Oulu) and the above-mentioned Olimb, who all had eight.

In the SHL Johnson scored 22 goals and 35 points, putting him fifth in the goal-scoring column. His point total was not the best on the team, though, behind both Mattias Janmark (13 + 23 = 36) and Olimb (7 + 39 = 46).

Olimb’s 46 points were enough for to tie for fifth in league scoring and the Norwegian (who was the Cramo Top Scorer and NordicBet MVP of the CHL) will undoubtedly play a huge role for Frölunda in this playoff series.

Luleå Hockey started the season impressively strong with 11 straight wins (five CHL games, five SHL games and one exhibition game), but the great start took a sharp turn for the worse when they just won two out of their following 11 games.

That is an excellent example of how the season went for the North Sweden-based team, who at times looked like they could beat any team in Europe, and then struggled mightily at other times. They ended up eighth place in the SHL, while at the same time winning the Champions Hockey League. A season filled with extreme ups and downs, definitely.

Luleå qualified for the quarter-finals by beating Djurgården Stockholm in a play-in series with two straight wins and, with their opponents confirmed, head coach Joakim Fagervall said to the club's official website, “I think this will become an awesome series with our earlier great games between each other. We’re well aware of that we’re facing a team that had nearly 30 points more than us in the regular season and it’s a tough team to face.”

He added, “We won the CHL Final against this fine team and we sure do want to win again!”

While they don't  have the offensive weapons of Frölunda, one position where Luleå matches up favourably is in goal, where Joel Lassinantti had the best goals-against average in the SHL (1.88) and the second-best save percentage (92.79) and his five shutouts were tied for second-most. Lassinantti was the biggest reason his team won the CHL title, and if they're to win this series he will probably have to be again. 

Though they are still considered the underdogs in the series, one thing the CHL victory surely did for Luleå is give them confidence. In the aftermath of the win, captain Chris Abbott said, “We beat a couple of the best teams in our league to get here – first Skellefteå and now Frölunda, so we know we can beat anybody.” 

The teams have faced each other six times this year – five in the SHL and once in the CHL. Each won three times (Frölunda 3–2 SO, 2–1 OT and 4–1; Luleå 1–0, 3–0 and 4–2). This fact, of course, makes it all an even more thrilling series to look forward to. 

With the CHL Final just six weeks ago and still fresh in everybody's mind, the biggest question in this quarter-final series is: Will the outcome be one of revenge, or rather a rerun?