SM-liiga quarterfinals preview

18 Mar 2013 | Mika Leino

Finnish SM-liiga starts quarterfinals on Wednesday this week. In Wild Card round both match-ups went to 3rd game where Lukko beat Kärpät and HIFK defeated SaiPa.

Jokerit-Lukko (wins in regular season 4-1)

Regular season winner Jokerit is a big favourite in this pair. They played a solid regular season and also beat Lukko four times out of five in regular season where Lukko got it's only win after a shootout. Lukko needs better goaltending from their world champ 2011 goalie Petri Vehanen if they want to challenge Jokerit seriously.

Tappara-HIFK (wins in regular season 3-1)

In this pair Tappara from Tampere is a big favourite. They have been able to put up a really good step up in their game excatly in the right time. Good goaltending from Juha Metsola, tight defense and offense full of scoring power led by experienced Stanley Cup winner Ville Nieminen and a future super star Aleksander Barkov Jr. make Tappara a difficult team to beat.

HIFK from their side had a very confusing season. Already before start of the season a big melee with Jokerit in European Trophy game brought penalties for coach and players and this surely influenced their early season. Then coach Sormunen was fired in January and Raimo Summanen was hired. He was also suspended for five games late in the regular season when attacking verbally harsh on Jokerit coach Tomi Lämsä. However HIFK managed to beat SaiPa in Wild Card round and who knows if that gave them a big boost. Beating Tappara in QF's would be though a big surprise.

JYP-HPK (wins in regular season 2-3)

Last season's champion JYP from Jyväskylä ended regular season with four lost games and this maybe causes some headache for JYP coach Jyrki Aho. Also JYP lost three games out of five against HPK. Still JYP has an experienced team with lot of champions in their roster so they surely know that playoffs are a different world and nothing is decided yet. HPK's position within six best was surely a surpise for many "experts". New coach Ari-Pekka Selin managed to find a good game system for their roster and they played without big slumps through the regular season.

Ässät-KalPa (wins in regular season 3-1)

Ässät from Pori played most of the season very unstable; nice win against a top team was followed by a home loss against last team of the league etc. At the end of January Ässät sold their best player Stephen Dixon to the KHL and many thought this was it for this season. From this started Ässät's historical run to 14 wins in a row during February. In those games Ässät allowed aproximately 1 goal per game and goalie Antti Raanta played 4 shutouts. This ofcourse gives Ässät a good starting point for the playoffs.

Allthough Ässät won 3 out of 4 games against KalPa in regular season all those wins came in OT. So apparently this pair is expected to be the tightest one in SM-liiga's quarterfinals.