Oulu Kärpät too good for Espoo Blues - 4th Finnish title in five years

Blues take first-ever championship medals, and Tappara are bronze medallists

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For Kärpät of Oulu, champagne celebrations are fast becoming second nature: the team won their fourth Finnish ice hockey title in five years on Saturday night, when they eclipsed Espoo Blues 5-1 in front of a rapturous home crowd, to seal the best of seven final by four games to one.
      On Wednesday, the Espoo side - in search of their first-ever medals - had managed to prolong matters by forcing a 2-1 overtime victory in Oulu.
      However, when the teams met for a fourth time in Espoo on Thursday, the visitors put them firmly in their place with a comprehensive 4-0 shutout.
     
Ominously for the Espoo side, on Thursday the first-line Kärpät forwards found their hitherto missing sharpness, and three goals in as many minutes in the third period left the Espoo players with heads hanging and probably not looking forward to the long trip north.
      Things continued in the same vein on Saturday evening, albeit that first blood went to the visitors.
      Espoo’s slender one-goal advantage after the first period was torn to shreds by four goals without reply in the second, two of them provided by playoffs points-winner Hannes Hyvönen (8+ 13 in Oulu’s fifteen playoff fixtures), and Michal Bros wrapped things up four minutes from the buzzer by putting the puck into an empty net after Bernt Brückler was pulled from the Espoo goal.
     
For the Oulu coach Kari Jalonen, it was the end of a glittering period in charge of the northern club.
      His four seasons at the helm brought three Finnish championships and the statistical blip of a bronze medal in 2006, and in each of the four years Kärpät won the regular league season.
      Jalonen would not be drawn on his plans for the future, but it is an open secret that he will be in charge of Helsinki HIFK next season.
      Jalonen will certainly not mind in the least that Hannes Hyvönen’s 21 playoff points equalled his own Finnish record (7 + 14), set when he played for Kärpät back in the 1980-81 season, when Kärpät won their first Finnish title.
     
The Blues coach Petri Matikainen was proud of his players, despite the disappointment of coming off second-best. Matikainen will be in charge next season, but one team stalwart who will not be on the roster is defender Arto Laatikainen, who played for Espoo Blues for ten seasons - his entire league career to date - and finally won some hardware. He will be playing next season for Färjestad in the Swedish Elitserien.
     
Espoo Blues now have bragging rights in the Greater Helsinki area.
      The two bigger teams Helsinki HIFK and Helsinki Jokerit both ended the season empty-handed, and both fell victim to Blues in the playoffs, at the quarter-final and semi-final stage respectively.
      To be fair, Jokerit had their moments and were third behind Kärpät and Blues during the regular season, and they were only relegated to the bronze final after a gruelling seven-match marathon against the Espoo team. Four of the semi-final matches went into overtime, and Jokerit actually led the series three games to one, before Espoo clawed their way back into it.
      Tappara of Tampere proved too good for Jokerit in the all-or-nothing bronze game and won 4-3.
     
As for HIFK, they could only manage 7th in the regular season, and Blues pummelled them 4-1 in the quarters, racking up 20 goals to only seven in reply.
      It was not exactly what the doctor ordered for a club that has won the Finnish title six times in the past, and if Kari Jalonen really is heading south as has been speculated, he will have a job on his hands next season to restore the club to its former glories.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Espoo Blues keep championship hopes alive with overtime victory in Oulu (10.4.2008)

Links:
  Oulu Kärpät (Wikipedia)
  Espoo Blues (Wikipedia)
  SM-Liiga, the Finnish Ice Hockey Premier League (playoffs results, in Finnish)

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