Espoo storming up the standings

When people everywhere changed their calendars on the wall, it truly did not look that good for the Espoo Blues. The hockey team from the sleeper city was hanging around in the lower half of the table with a strong tendency towards missing the Play-Offs completely. 45 days later things couldn’t look more different for them. Espoo is now even competing for a spot in the Top6 that would guarantee them the first Play-Off round.

Out of the 16 games in 2015 Espoo was only defeated once in regulation by Tappara, but apart from that they got at least one point out of all the games. Even more remarkable is the current 8-game winning streak, which was expanded today by Kim Hirschovits’ decisive shootout goal against Tappara, taking revenge for the 6-1 rout a few weeks ago.

For quite a long time though, it did not look like the Blues could come out with a win today. The early go ahead goal by Robert Rooba, who took advantage of a mistake in the Tappara defense, was turned around by a very efficient Tappara team in the second period. Despite an 18-5 shot margin, which the Blues carried out of this period, Tappara was the team to score twice. 50 seconds in Pekka Jormakka converted a penalty shot and 11 minutes later Olli Palola brought Tappara ahead on the power play.

Jukka Peltola’s goal 2 minutes into the last frame finally put the game upside down. But with time winding down Espoo finally made use of another 17 shots they had in this period. With exactly 49 minutes played Kalle Kaijomaa cut the gap in half on the power-play, while Siim Liivik evened the score on another power-play with 2 minutes to go in order to send the game into overtime and consequently the shootout. Liivik's goal looked a bit like a lucky bounce of his stick after Jussi Makkonen's feed from the side of the blue paint, but when you are on a run things tend to fall into place.

Kim Hirschovits was not only the hero today. With his 19 points this year (9 goals, 10 assists) he played an important role in the Blues run from the bottom of the Liiga standings right into the Play-Off race.

One team that surely does not want to meet Espoo in the play-offs is IFK Helsinki. Within those 16 games, HIFK got defeated 4 times by the Blues and got outscored 5-14, including 2 shutouts.

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