The new rise of ice hockey in Espoo was created five years ago. The next goal is to move up to the League for the 2024–2025 season.
Ketterä–Kiekko-Espoo je. 3–4. Match wins 2–4.
Ice hockey Mesti’s finals were like a copy of the finals of the League. The decisive goals were scored in the last seconds.
Imatran Ketterä was already stretching the final series to the seventh match, when Janne Hämäläinen brought Kiekko-Espoo to 3–3 levels 54 seconds before the end. The set numbers of the actual playing time were 2–1, 0–1, 1–1.
Only one minute and 36 seconds had passed in the overtime, when Anton Ollikainen decided the victory for Kiekko-Espo and silenced the stands of the Imatra ice hall.
The same teams played for the Mestis championship a year ago as well. Then Ketterä won the match 4–2. Now the readings were the same for Kiekko-Espo.
“Empty feeling. I said during a break in the locker room that we should enjoy this. We always get such a drama arc for these games. The championship was no accident. This stems from a long duun”, Kiekko-Espoo’s head coach Tomas Westerlund said with relief in an interview with C More.
In the sixth in the final match Jarkko Harjula took Ketterä to the lead in 6:17, but Tommi Huhtala brought Espoo level six minutes later.
The nimble point shark and NHL club Philadelphia’s reservation Samu Tuomaala took the home team to a 2-1 lead in 15:32.Joona Tamminen brought Espoo up to par in 33.11. In the previous match, he received a hard blow to his face and now played sacrificially with a mask.
In the third set, the match seemed to turn in favor of the home team and towards the seventh final, when Jesse Viskari the Espoo goalkeeper deflects the puck Walter Ignatjewin behind the back.
A week ago, Viskari was taken unconscious on a stretcher to the hospital during the second final match in Imatra, but he recovered to playing condition.
Mestizo the victory was a valuable seal for Kiekko-Espo, the foundation of which was created five years ago, when men’s representative ice hockey ended in Espoo. Then the legend of Espoo United, who played in Mestis, ended in bankruptcy.
After that, the background forces of Espoo Kiekkoseura and Espoo Palloseura decided to revive the old Kiekko-Espoo also at the adult level.
The new rise started with the Suomi series. Kiekko-Espoo was promoted to Mesti for the 2020-2021 season. Kiekko-Espoon played the Suomi series in the “junior hall” of Espoonlahti. The club kept its office in the adjacent construction site container.
From Mest, Kiekko-Espoo played again in the Metro-arena, where the finals of the series were watched by more than 5,000 spectators at their best, which is the audience record for Mest.
The large number of people showed that Espoo has a much-needed sense of community.
“Five years ago, everyone said that you couldn’t find it in Espoo. Yes, it is there, but it just wasn’t made to bloom in its best form”, Kiekko-Espoo’s director of sports Kim Hirschowitz said Imatra from the middle of the party hum.
Hirschovits played in three different Espoo teams between 2013 and 2019: Liigaa Blues, Mestista Espoo United and Suomiserija Kiekko-Espoo.
“Every year we have had a good team that has been built with the right value base. Players care and want to succeed. This year was no exception,” Hirschovits explained the loss factors.
It’s a shame that there are no league qualifiers in Finland. Kiekko-Espo and Ketterä could have a say in them.
Three years ago, Kiekko-Espoo already set the goal of applying for a league place in the fall of 2023. If it succeeds, Espoo would see league hockey after a nine-year break in the 2024-2025 season.
“We want to be a league-worthy organization. The number of audiences and the feeling are proof of that,” says Hirschvits.
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