After winning the Finnish league championship last time exactly ten years ago, my Finnish hockey team has made their way into the finals yet again and are leading the series after the initial game... and they are playing under the same head coach they had ten years ago, who returned to coach the team this past offseason. All the stars seem to align, and hopefully my city and team will be celebrating their 16th Finnish league championship in a weeks time.

Check out the crazy redirect to clinch the first game of the final series with 5 seconds left in the 3rd period:

Oh man, nice wrister from the point! You got to be pumped, . I'm looking around for a site I can hopefully catch a game, but I noticed they're up 2-1 in the series already, eh? This is the best site I found for any information so far: SM-Liiga - 2012/2013 - Final - Hockey - scoresway - Results, fixtures, tables and statistics . Keep us updated!

They just lost the 4th (away) game 4-0, so it seems that my team is incapable of winning in their stadium, but thankfully they have the homefield advantage. Both teams have now won both of their home games, my team won the first with 5 seconds on the clock, lost the second game 5-1, then won the 3rd game with 1 second on the clock, and now lost the 4th game 4-0. They play again today on Monday, so we'll see if the homefield advantage still holds. They alternate the city they play the game at between each game, so it's not like in NHL where they first play twice at home then twice away.

The crappy thing is that my team (Tappara) lost their #1 and #2 centers for the season during the last game of the first playoff series, so they haven't had Barkov (#1) nor Connelly (#2) to center their top two lines since then, which is starting to hurt their overall productivity. They were able to win the previous series without those two guys, but it seems that it might become an issue in the final series.

Oh man, I hate when you get a series like that, unless you have home ice advantage. That's interesting they alternate venues for each game, makes it more of a challenge, IMO.

Filppula got a nice power-play goal @ 16:09 in the second period for the Wings last night. ... I hope he heats up these next few games.

Bad news. Tappara lost their home game yesterday. It was an extremely close game again (1-2) and it took a third overtime period to settle it, but with 109 minutes played the visitors were able to score the winning goal. Next game is played on Wednesday and the series could end if they win at home.

Tappara loses their first & second line centers in the opening round of the playoffs, still makes it to the finals and manages to take their opponent to a third overtime? ... tells me that team either has a deep bench, plays with a lot of heart, or both. Looking at the Tappara roster & see you have Dale Clark from Sarnia, Ontario playing defenseman. Sarnia is a pretty good hockey town, lot of local talent and only about 30 miles (48.2km) north of Detroit. Both my kids skated quite a bit there.

Best of luck tonight, I'll be rooting for the team from this side of the pond, .

Well, it's over and done with. Tappara lost today 3-2 and with that they lost the final series 4-2.

It would've been really nice if they could've won the whole thing, but even getting to the finals was a great effort from a team that was third from the bottom when the year started. Somehow I'm honestly not that disappointed, which is weird in a sense, but I guess it's due to this being a weird hockey year altogether. The sad thing is that Tappara will be losing some if its better players once again, since they just don't have the money to compete with some other Finnish teams let alone the KHL or NHL. Barkov might still return for another year even if his picked in the top 5, but the team that drafts him might want to bring him over to the AHL immediately, so his future with Tappara is really an unknown.

On a side note, I can't believe the goalie for Ässät - the team that won the Finnish champinoship - has gone undrafted. He was simply magnificent this season, and he really could be the next great Finnish goalie.




Kind of a crappy video, but I couldn't find a better one of him, and at least they have Atreyu as the soundtrack.

Wow (good video), weren't you posting about this guy last season? I see what you mean ... moves good side-to-side and plays confident in the net, can't see why he wouldn't be an NHL prospect. I'm gonna' watch for this guy in the offseason to see if anyone picks him up, .

Tough loss for the home team, Finny, but you're right, you have to draw from the positives. They had a pretty good run, .

They used to broadcast SM-liiga, KHL and SEL games on a cable channel around here, I'm really disappointed they stopped. You used to get to see some of these guys before they came to the NHL & its good hockey.