Asia League regular season comes to an end

The race for the first place of the Asia League was interesting until the end. Before the last game Oji Eagles had the lead of the standings one point ahead of Nippon Paper Cranes. The Japanese teams played each other in Paper Cranes´ home ground on the final day.

The home team took the lead at 7:45 through Hidenao Kokubo but Aaron Keller replied for the guests only 28 seconds later. In the second period Oji took the lead for the first time when Shuhei Kuji scored. With seven minutes remaining of regulation Paper Cranes´ Masahito Nishiwaki tied the game but Oji regained the lead a half minute later when Masafumi Ogawa got a goal. Once again Paper Cranes tied the game at 55:48 when Daisuke Obara scored and the game went to overtime.

There Yosuke Kon got his 12th goal of the season to win the game for Oji Eagles. Yosuke Kon finished second in the points scoring ranking with 57 points (12+45), 2 points behind Tohoku Free Blades’ Go Tanaka.

Tohoku Free Blades finished third after beating Nippon Paper Cranes 6-5 on the last day. Tanaka got two goals, including the game-winner.
Anyang Halla of South Korea finished 4th to be the best non-Japanese team and the only team outside Japan to make it to the playoffs.
High1, also from South Korea finished 5th, Nikko Icebucks (Japan) finished sixth and on the last place of the seven team ended the only Chinese team – China Dragon.

	Oji Eagles	36	21	5	3	7	161	91	75
	Nippon Paper Cranes	36	21	3	5	7	141	95	74
	Tohoku Free Blades	36	18	4	6	8	160	112	68
	Anyang Halla	36	17	6	4	9	130	94	67
	High1	36	15	2	2	17	131	112	51
	Nikko Icebucks	36	10	4	2	20	95	112	40
	China Dragon	36	0	0	2	34	46	248	2

Oji Eagles will play Anyang Halla in the semi finals while Nippon Paper Cranes get Tohoku Free Blades.
The semi finals and the finals will be played in best-of-5 series. The dates of the semi finals are February 26, February 27, March 1, March 5 and March 6. The finals will be played March 12, 13, 15, 19 and 20. The higher ranked team will play at home for the first three games. The lower ranked teams will play at home game 4 and 5.

Last season Cranes finished third in the Regular season but managed to win the championship after beating Seibu 3-2 in the finals.

 

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