KooKoo surprises the league
Going into the season there was one team most people believed to have a tough year ahead. But Kouvola is collecting point by point in the early stages of the season.
When a team
is promoted from a second tier league like Mestis to the top level, that switch
won’t be easy. Vaasa proved that last year, Mikkeli might face this next year,
only KooKoo Kouvola seems to be completely unimpressed by it this season. 7
games into their new Liiga adventure, they yet have to experience their second
regulation loss. In 6 out of their 7 games they brought home at least one
point. But their biggest upset came yesterday evening, beating the champion
from Oulu at home in regulation to get three more points.
Kärpät did
dominate the first period with a 12-1 shot advantage, but Frederic Cloutier in
KooKoo’s goal could turn away all shots to keep Kouvola in the game. In the
second period the first attack went past Iiro Tarkki on the other side, when
Mika Koivisto tried a wraparound, which Tarkki could deflect, but the the
rebound ended up on Jan-Mikael Juutilainen’s stick, who brought KooKoo ahead. Halfway
through the game Jesse Puljujärvi evened things out with a dynamic drive into
the slot beating Cloutier with a wrist shot.
Yet two
minutes later Kouvola restored the lead with a beautiful combination via Mikael
Kurki and Aki Kangasmäki that found Juuso Rajala all open directly in front of
the goal, so he could beat Tarkki in the upper right corner of the net. Oulu
did not find a way to get back as Cloutier went on to finish the night with 32
saves.
But Kärpät
is in good company. On Thursday Kouvola hosted vice champion Tappara, who came up
short in last year’s finals against Oulu, and also stole a point from another
top team based on great efficiency and a strong defense. After 19 minutes had
been played, Ryan O’Connor received a pass across the ice on the second KooKoo
powerplay of the game, to have the goal all open in front of him. Ironically the assists on
this powerplay goal went to Jarkko Malinen and Josh Green, who both suited up
for Tappara last season.
5:23
minutes into the second period it was up to Patrick Laine to break Juha Järvenpää’s
shutout with a hard wrist shot from the face-off circle. However, this was the
only goal Järvenpää had to give up in regulation on 29 shots he faced during
the night.
The
decisive goal came with 49 seconds into overtime. Kristian Kuusela played a
deadly pass right through two KooKoo defenders, where Arttu Ilomäki skated in
to receive it and dangle it around Järvenpää to secure the extra point for
Tappara.
Another team
on the rise is Ilves Tampere. With two stunning wins this week they got
themselves into 4th place. On Wednesday they defeated Hämeenlinna
with 5-1 and kept on scoring in yesterday’s 6-2 win over JYP as well. While
Hannu Toivonen stood out in those games with a combined 54 saves, the burden of
scoring is spread on many shoulders. Aleksi Mustonen, Joonas Vihko, Markku
Flinck, Eemeli Suomi and Antti Tyrväinen all contributed with 2 goals this
week.
On the top
of the standings Lukko took over the No1 spot with two wins over Lahti on the
weekend. Friday’s game at home was a pretty easy thing for Lukko as Aaron
Gagnon, Toni Koivisto and twice Turo Asplund did not let anyone doubt about the
4-1 outcome of the game, but on Saturday the Pelicans could annoy them a bit.
Ville Vahalahti was the only one managing to get past Pelicans keeper Niko
Hovinen in regulation, leaving the door open for a late game equalizer forcing
the game into the shootout, which came 17 seconds away from the final horn
through Teddy da Costa. So Lukko had to put in some extra work and finally
Aaron Gagnon put in the decisive penalty to give Lukko 5 points out of those
two games.