After their dramatic eighth-final victory over Sparta Prague, Linköping HC centre Jeff Taffee shared his thoughts about the series.

by Stefan Lövstrand

Lingköping HC have advanced to the quarter-finals of the Champions Hockey League, but they needed a dramatic goal in the last two seconds of the second game to beat Sparta Prague 4–3 on aggregate. The goal was scored by Canadian Jacob Micflikier on a set-up by American linemate Jeff Taffe. After the game, Taffe – a 33-year-old centre with 180 NHL games under his belt – answered a few questions about the series. 

Jeff, that went right down to the end. How difficult an opponent were Sparta?
I thought they had a lot of skill on their team. They played us hard tonight and with a couple of bounces either way . . .  This game could have gone either way as well. 

They're a top dog in their domestic league. Was your defensive play something that you talked about before this series? 
Yeah, I think when we eliminated the turnovers and their transition play and forced the puck down deep in their end, we kept them away from the style of play that they like. They are a fast and skilled team that knows how to do that –  had we played “run n’ gun” with them I think we wouldn’t have been so successful. 

There was a bit of “run n’ gun” from your line out there, though. Did you feel that it was difficult keeping up?
Well yes, that is something difficult to keep up with and when play starts going back and forth things can get out of hand. But we were able to slow it down, got a couple of lucky bounces and we evened the score. It was one of those games. 

You seemed like the better team the last part of the game, coming back strong. How did you react on the bench at the time? 
Yes, it felt like there never was any panic over the guys but we knew we had a couple of good shifts, so we tried to keep ourselves cool and the team did what we wanted to do in the end. 

What are your impressions of the CHL so far? 
I like it! Everything is a little bit new to me – coming over here. It’s a good experience and something new with travelling to new places and facing other teams. Just try to get a bigger crowd to these games and overall I think the guys appreciate this. Overall you might think it has been a little bit to good for us.