Tappara’s rollercoaster season continues

Five weeks ago the world in Tampere was looking bright. With a win against Kuopio Tappara found itself establishing a 9-game winning streak. But once the calendar turned to November that streak was gone and the vice-champion started to build up a negative series that is even more worrying. The 3-2 loss tonight in Jyväskylä marked a 10-game period in which Tappara could only land a single Overtime win against Turku. The other 9 games were lost. And it doesn’t even seem to be a matter of defense. It is the offense, which is struggling.

Tonight they managed to equalize the score twice in the first periods through Jere Karjalainen and Olli Palola, but after Anssi Löfman’s second goal of the night Tappara was finished and JYP left the ice with a 3-2 win.

Yesterday they had an even more bitter pill to swallow. Against the last placed team from Vaasa they had to suffer from an early Vaasa lead, in which coincindence played an important role as Mike Brennan’s harmless shot from the goal line got deflected into the goal by a Tappara skate. Stephen Dixon could even the score early in the second period, but again bad luck provided Damien Fleury the puck just in front of a wide open net just 37 seconds into the last period. Fleury could add an empty net goal later on to make it 3-1 Vaasa in Tampere.

Speaking of Vaasa, the win in Tampere wasn’t a fluke at all. Sport is starting to feel more at home in the new league. After only 3 wins out of their first 17 games in Liiga, they could now win 5 out of the last 10 games. Plus 2 points for losses in overtime. The last one of those came tonight against Rauma. Both of Olavi Vauhkonen’s top-shelf blasts for Lukko could be equalized by Joel Kiviranta, who nicely outplayed goalie Oskari Setänen, and Teemu Tallberg, who found the way over the goal line in a last second scramble, to bring the game into the shootout. Henrik Koivisto kept his cool and won it for Rauma, but Vaasa is showing in the last weeks that they can compete in this league.

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