Tappara wins huge on Kapanen’s big day

The number 24 is a very well known one in Kuopio's hockey scene. It is the number of an NHL allstar, who not only appeared in 831 NHL games scoring 458 points, but also in 445 SM-Liiga games in which he added another 320 points. Yesterday Sami Kapanen's old team KalPa Kuopio retired his number 24 and held a ceremony for him during the team's game against HIFK. Before, there was even a little Allstar-game for which Kapanen invited some old teammates.

Luckily the current KalPa team read the script for the day and fulfilled its part to give Sami a win on this day. Patrick Davis scored once in each of the first two periods to give KalPa a 2-0 lead after 40 minutes. 13 minutes into the last period, Jonne Tammela could put a rebound of his own shot past Helsinki goalie Kevin Lankinen for a three goal lead, before HIFK stormed back.

Within a minute two shots from Joonas Järvinen and Daniel Grillfors trickled past Samu Perhonen into Kalpa's goal to set the stage for an intense finish, which found a happy end for KalPa with an empty net goal from Antti Halonen.

The win helped Kuopio to climb into 8^th position in the standings, while HIFK had to let Kärpät and Tappara pass them to find themselves in 4^th place now.

Tappara's victory in Turku meanwhile got them in the lead of the Liiga standings. Facing a much improved TPS team from last season, that has one of the hottest offensive trios in the whole league in Lauri Tukonen (Liiga topscorer), Eric Perrin and Tomi Kallio, who are all among the Top7 scorers in Finland, Tappara absolutely dominated period one. With 5 unanswered goals by Arttu Ilomäki, Jani Lajunen (2) and Jan-Mikael Järvinen (2), they decided the game before TPS was even on the ice.

Ilomäki joined the 2-goal scorer club 6 minutes into the middle period, when he stole a puck from Julius Vähätalo in Turku's own zone and deked goalie Teemu Lassila for the 6^th Tappara goal of the day. Lajunen secured his hattrick early in the last frame when he converted a rebound of a Kristian Kuusela powerplay shot that only hit metal.

16 seconds later Tomi Kallio managed to at least break Tomi Karhunen's shutout, before Lauri Tukonen could display what talent the TPS team is normally able to show on any other day than yesterday, when he found his way through 3 Tappara defenders to give the game its final goal for a 7-2 ending in favor of Tampere.

Two other top teams met in Oulu, where Adam Masuhr with a wrist shot and Rony Ahonen with a rebound off Iiro Tarkki traded goals between Oulu and Rauma in the first period. At the game's halftime mark a beautiful puck moving combination from Mika Niemi and Markus Nutivaara found Sebastian Aho completely free in the slot and the hero from last year's finals did not waste any time and gave Kärpät the lead. Two minutes later Markus Nutivaara scored himself on the powerplay without any helpers. He just crossed the line and as he was not attacked he simply banged the puck in for the 3-1. Mika Niemi added an empty net goal later on to give Oulu a 4-1 win moving them into third place now.

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