Red Bull sweeps the Caps in the finals

The Capitals had an energetic start and showed from the first minute o, they did not want the Bulls to celebrate the title in Vienna. Rotter and Fischer, both denied by Gracnar, had the first chances. The Caps did not look good on their first man advantage situation, but in the second it was Ferland to use a rebound and score the go-ahead-goal for the home team.

Salzburg was ready to respond and controlled the following 5 minutes of play, also beating Caps-goalkeeper Matt Zaba for the first time. It was Thomas Raffl, brother of Philadelphia Flyers’ forward Michael, to find the equalizer on the Power Play. Vienna slowly worked their way out of the slump and in the 19^th minute found the lead again. This time it was Foucault, who showed great patience to beat the sprawling Luca Gracnar, as he used the rebound on a shot by Ferland.

The second period was intense right from the get-go and featured a lot of penalties in the first few minutes. In the 25^th minute Vienna was on a 4 on 3 Power Play and fan favourite Rafael Rotter, on a perfect pass by Dustyn Sylvester, capitalized, giving the Caps a two-goal-lead.

The Bulls tried to find an immediate response, but Matt Zaba robbed Kyle Beach with a superb glove save. Salzburg was the team to dictate the play and Vienna replied on the counter attack with Nödl and Bois, who could not bring the puck behind Luka Gracnar. In the 37^th the puck a shot by Raffl deflected off Welser for the Bulls second goal.

In the last minutes of the second period Matt Zaba saved the close lead with two great stops on Trattnig and Latusa to make sure the Caps would go into the second intermission up by one goal.

Salzburg kept pressuring and after little more than one minute played in the third period, Ryan Duncan hit the right post of Zaba. In the 43^rd minute Patrick Peter was given a game misconduct for boarding and the Bulls had 5 minutes time to display the league’s best Power Play formation. It took 2 minutes and 19 seconds, when Kyle Beach used a rebound to score the equalizer.

For a team as efficient as Salzburg is, 5 minutes of man advantage are enough time for two goals. Brett Sterling deflected Trattnig's shot from the blue line to give Salzburg their first lead of the game. Would this be the championship winning goal?

Short answer: Yes. Vienna would try to come back and had two chances with Foucault and Watkins, but it would not be enough. Even pulling the goalie would not help and so the Red Bull Salzburg are EBEL champions 2015!

With this win in Game 4, the Red Bull have won their 11^th straight playoff game and clinched their 5^th EBEL and 6^th Austrian championship title in history. Salzburg, just as in the 2014 season, dominated the regular season season, finishing with a 38-11-5 record before the start of the post-season. This year though, there was no team to stop them in the playoffs, as Salzburg won 12 out of 13 games, and could raise both the EBEL and Austrian championship cups.

The Karl Nedved Trophy, the official name of the cup awarded to the winner of EBEL, is now back in Austria, after in the 2014 season it was the Italian club HC Bolzano to win it all as the first ever non-Austrian team.

For the Vienna Capitals ends a season with a lot of ups and downs: After the best start into the season in club history, the team never really got back to their initial shape til Game 3 of the quarter finals. In the end the Caps managed to turn things around, qualifying for the finals, but all in all Salzburg was simply better in all 4 games.

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