Seven Finnish clubs have advanced to the playoff stage of the Champions Hockey League and two of them, TPS Turku and Lukko Rauma, were drawn together for the eighth-final round. TPS sports manager Ari Vuori was on hand to witness the Playoff Draw and offered his thoughts on the match-up afterward.
by Sami Iilomo
HELSINKI - TPS Turku will face another Finnish team, Lukko Rauma, in the first round of the CHL playoffs. It's the only set of teams from the same country that were paired against each other at Friday's Playoff Draw.
“This is a very interesting set-up. The teams know each other very well and it’s challenging for the coaches,” TPS sports manager Ari Vuori said after the draw was finished.
Even though Vuori thinks it would have been fun to travel somewhere new in Europe, there are a lot positives about a facing team from the same country.
“Thinking from the financial side, this was probably the best possible match-up for us because it’s not that expensive to travel to Rauma compared to somewhere else in Europe. We also have some busy weeks coming up so we don't have to spend a lot of time travelling and we don’t have to think about going to the airport immediately after one of our league games,” Vuori reasoned.
Vuori is expecting fierce battles against Lukko, with the winner advancing to the quarter-finals, and he has been impressed so far with the high level of intensity in all CHL games.
“I think that the players are going to be really motivated as they have been for every CHL game so far. These are like playoffs in the middle of the season. We also have some history (with Lukko) from recent years in the playoffs in our own league.”
Finnish teams have been very successful so far in the CHL. Out of eight teams, seven have advanced to the next stage of the competition.
“It wasn’t a surprise that so many teams from Finland advanced to the playoff stage. We knew that all of us (Finnish teams) had a good chance of advancing. Of course everyone needed to perform well to get here because all teams were taking this seriously,” said the former TPS player.
From the group stage TPS gathered 12 points and made the final group of 16 teams with the last wild-card spot, edging out the Växjö Lakers on goal difference.
“We played our first two games in our home rink and we managed to score a lot of goals in those. Then we lost to Bolzano in Italy and it was a disappointment for the team. After that loss we managed to beat HC Pardubice in a shootout and then there were two games against Linköping HC, which we needed to win or at least gather some points. We lost the first one, so we needed three points in the last one and we battled hard to get the win.”