SM-liiga finalists set

12 Apr 2012 | Mika Leino

Pelicans and JYP both ended their semifinal series in game 5 and will start finals next Monday

Pelicans-Blues 2-1 (series 4-1)

Despite tight numbers Pelicans were pretty dominant in this game as well as in the whole series. Blues came all the time one step behind and Pelicans' active forechecking created big problems. That way you can say that Pelicans didn't leave any place for questions who is better.

Pelicans' both goals were scored by defender Joonas Järvinen and Blues' goal was scored by a 17 year old youngster Juuso Ikonen in a penaltyshot.

Pelicans has made quite an improvement from last seasons relegation games to this years finals. They have never earlier reached even semifinals so this will be the first SM-liiga medal for the club. Coach Kai Suikkanen coached TPS Turku to champions year 2010 and he will now have the second shot for the gold.

JYP-Jokerit 3-2 OT (series 4-1)

JYP will make their second final appearance in three years (champions 2009). Their OT win in game five was third OT game in this series and all five games were won by only one goal as well as all 5 regular season games between these teams.

In the final game Jokerit took the lead by captain Väänänens slap shot. JYP though came back already in the first period and scored two goals by Ossi Louhivaara and Tuomas Pihlman. In the second period Jokerit equalized by Dane Nichlas Hardt and Teemu Pulkkinen even got a chance to get Jokerit ahead with penalty shot. He managed to play JYP goalie Riku Helenius out but didn't manage to lift the puck over the pad of Helenius.

So the series was very tight but no team takes four wins only with luck and you can say that JYP was a little bit ahead of Jokerit in small areas of the game like power play, penalty control and maybe also in goaltending.