Big surprise looming in Denmark

Three titles in a row and five championships in the last 7 years. SonderjyskE also won the regular season over Frederikshavn White Hawks and were the favourites again. But after sweeping the Aalborg Pirates in the first round, they are struggling now with Esbjerg Energy.

The first two games went 6-4 and 5-4 in overtime to Esbjerg before SonderjyskE could score a home victory with 4-1. But yesterday Esbjerg restored the 2-game lead in the series. Aaron Lee scored just 38 seconds into the game for Esbjerg and shocked the champions, who could come back though after 8 minutes through Tomas Spelling as Esbjerg allowed them to have a 5-on-3 advantage.

Still in the first period Jannik Christensen regained the lead for Esbjerg, that could be propelled to 3-1 by Lee's second goal of the night to start the second period. Now SonderjyskE needed to fight back and they did so with Cory Quirk and Scott Campbell, who managed to equalize the game before the end of the period.

As no more goals came in the last period, the game was sent into overtime. At the 73:54 mark of the game Aaron Lee picked up the third point of the night assisting on Tyler Gron's game-winning goal to give Esbjerg three chances to kick out the reigning champions from Vojens. The first one will come on friday, april 1^st.

The second semi-final is wide open at the moment. Frederikshavn and Herning have each won both their home games so far resulting in a 2-2 tie at the moment. The White Hawks will host on friday and try to get another lead to go forward.

Tweets by @eurohockey