TPS Turku played their first CHL game of the season on Wednesday night and beat Lorenskog IK at home by a 4-1 score. Read more in Gamecentre.
In Lorenskog IK's first CHL game in Liberec, they got an early goal, then hung around in the game despite being badly outplayed, and got a late equalizer to earn a point on the road. When Joacim Sandulius opened the scoring by tapping in a pass from Steffen Thoresen on the power play at 8:01, some may have got the feeling they were about to do it again. And just as happened in Liberec, they rode the goaltending of Jeff Jakaitis and escaped to their dressing room with the score tied 1-1. The shots in the opening frame were 12-7 TPS, with Otto Nieminen scoring the tying goal on a delayed Lorenskog penalty with just 33 seconds left in the period.
In the second period, however, the real TPS stood up, and they were led by the men who are supposed to lead them. In the 28th minute, Eric Perrin sent Tomi Kallio on a rush up the right wing, and the TPS captain did a beautiful job of manufacturing a goal – undressing a Lorenskog defenceman, then cutting in front and flipping the puck past Jakaitis. Four and a half minutes later it was the same pair contributing to the goal again – linemate Erik Thorell finishing it by spinning around in front and firing it home.
On the line's first game together as a complete trio, Perrin said, "Me and Tomi played together all last year. I think that our view of the game is pretty much the same, so that makes things a lot easier. It’s like riding a bicycle sometimes. And Erik compliments the line very well. He’s got great speed and good hockey sense and quite seem to understand what kind of game we want to play."
TPS began the third period in firm control and added to their lead with an early goal from Topi Taavitsainen. For the second game in a row, Jakaitis was the reason his team wasn't blown out, stopping 38 of 42 shots, but there's only so much he could do against a skilled TPS squad. At the other end, Russian goaltender Alexander Georgiev stopped 13 of 14 Lorenskog shots for the win.
"They had more speed than us, they created traffic in front of our goal and did a great job overall," Lorenskog coach Kenneth Larsen said about TPS. "We know they're a better team than us, so to beat them we needed to have more guts than them, but tonight they had more guts than us."
“We were quite well-prepared for the game," said TPS coach Ari-Pekka Selin. "We got good video clips and information about tonight’s opponent. We knew to expect to play against very hard-working team. Young players like Taavitsainen and (Martin) Berger played well tonight. I’m very pleased with my team.”