Luleå wins the first CHL title

Only eighth place in SHL but best in Europe. Luleå completed one of their aims of the season by winning the all-Swedish CHL final at home ice 4-2 against Frölunda. But for long it seemed that Frölunda would spoil the party in a sold out arena. Frölunda had a 2-0 lead and seemed to be in full control of the game when Luleå turned things around, much thanks to a controversial match penalty.

Frölunda's veteran Joel Lundqvist shocked the home fans when he opened the scoring already after 17 seconds with an easy scoring after a bad rebound by Joel Lassinantti. The CHL top scorer and MVP Mathis Olimb added 2-0 halfway through the first period scoring on another rebound. But despite a tough start Lassinantti bounced back and saved Luleå on a couple of occasions in the second period when Frölunda was very close to 3-0 which probably would have killed the game.

Luleå went in to the third period knowing that they had done many great come backs before in CHL this season and when Kristian Näkyva finally put Luleå on the board with a power play goal at 47:43 Luleå got a lot of energy. And just about a minute later they got the help they needed when Frölunda's Oscar Fantenberg was sent to the locker room with a match penalty for checking to the head. Fantenberg jumped in with a high elbow against Karl Fabricius who fell to the ice in pain. But replays showed that it was Fabricius' own stick that caused most of the pain and perhaps a major penalty was to hard. A hard situation to decide and the decision turned out to be decisive for the tournament as Luleå got two goals on the power play.

First Peter Cehlarik found a tiny gap between Linus Fernström's skate and the post early in the power play. And later after a quite bad play by Luleå, Johan Forsberg got the tournament winner and just as the earlier goals his shot from close range just barely bounced over the goal line behind Fernström.

"It was actually completly wonderful", Forsberg said after the game. "We made a magic third period and turned the game around".

Dejan Kukan sealed the trophy by scoring 4-2 on the open net and but players and fans exploded in big celebrations. At the end you can say it was a well deserved win for Luleå as one of the few Swedish clubs that really took the tournament just as serious as the SHL.

Tweets by @eurohockey