Up or down for the Pelicans?

09 Jan 2015 | Markus Nisius

It was a mixed day for Pelicans fans today. A victory against Ilves was followed by news about a key player leaving for Sweden. Which road will Lahti take in the next weeks?

The Lahti Pelicans have been a quiet team so far in the season. For most of the season they were struggling and so they found themselves close to the bottom for a reason. But 2015 should be a new start and indeed the team showed improvement in the first 4 games this year.

They were able to beat HPK 5-2 and KalPa 3-1 to start the year with a perfect weekend before being rolled over by the dominating Kärpät Oulu 1-5. Tonight they had the chance to make another push towards the pre-playoff spots when they hosted Ilves Tampere. And again they showed that they can compete on a playoff level. The game went back and forth.

Joel Mustonen opened the scoring for Lahti midway through the first period by putting in a rebound off Joonas Korpisalo, who knocked off a couple of good shots shortly before. 20 minutes later highlights started chasing each other. First Turo Asplund equalized the game with a dry shot from the face-off circle before Tapio Laakso showed up all alone in front of Janne Juvonen, who could turn away one but not two of his shots. Not even half a minute later Antti Jaatinen jabbed in a lose puck on the far post for the Pelicans and the game was back to point zero again. These three goals came within 2 minutes only.

Ilves regained the lead early in the third, during a high sticking 4 minute penalty against Joonas Hurri, with a blast from the blue line by Tommi Kivistö. Only 4 minutes later Mustonen repeated his trick from his first goal of the night and used another rebound to even up the game once more. Consequently the game went into the shootout, in which Joel Mustonen finished up his hattrick to get the game-winner for Lahti.

But after the game the fans should get a not so good news. The Pelicans announced that Jordan Smotherman will leave the team for Rögle BK in Sweden, which leaves the question where the Pelicans are headed now. Smotherman is the fourth best scorer on the team and his 11 goals and 20 points in 38 games will surely be missed, although the rest of the team showed huge improvements in the early year.

Lahti is only 5 points shy of the Espoo Blues in 10^th place. The next game on Tuesday might give us a hint what the future has to offer for Lahti as they are travelling to exactly those Espoo Blues.