KalPa wins derby in final minutes

When Kuopio and Jyväskylä meet there is always a local rivalry going on between the two teams from middle Finland. But it is also a clash between two CHL teams. Yesterday KalPa did have the better start and managed to create some really good scoring chances, however JYP’s efficiency striked first. After 12:41 Jani Tupurainen converted a breakaway to shock KalPa. And Kuopio needed some time to deal with it indeed. Luckily midway through the second period it was an individual effort by Juuso Riikola, who first got around defender Salonen with a nice toedrag and then put the puck past Tarkki for the equalizer.

But JYP fought back again. 5 minutes into the last period Darryl Boyce found Mikko Luoma open in the slot and he nailed it in for the second lead of the game. Jyväskylä could now continue to keep the pressure up, yet failed to do it until the end of the game. With 98 seconds left in the game Michal Birner sent a nice feed over to Jukka Voutilainen all across JYP’s defensive zone, who beat Tarkki for the 2-2 with a shot that was not unstoppable. 36 seconds later KalPa was on the power-play and Tomas Kubalik could find the gap to score the game-winning goal only 1:02 minute away from the final horn. A bitter loss for JYP, who had the win already in front of their eyes but could not carry on to win it.

Meanwhile former champion Porin Ässät is gaining ground with a great weekend. Yesterday they were able to fight off Ilves Tampere with 3-2, a game in which the only difficulty turned out to be a pair of Ilves goals scored at the half time of the game when Tapio Laakso first equalized Henri Heino’s earlybird goal from the second minute with a nice wraparound and then Sami Sandell caught goalie Rasmus Rinne on the wrong foot just a minute later to give Ilves  a 2-1 lead. However, Esa Lindell could even up the score again on a powerplay in the last minutes of the second period and in the last period Tuomas Huhtanen added the game-winning goal for Ässät.

On Friday they already got three more points into the bank by beating Vaasa 4-1 with goals from Elo, Niemi, Huhtanen and Ahlgren. Pori is now in 2^nd spot right behind SaiPa, who could beat Espoo 4-1 and lost in overtime in Lahti on the weekend.

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