Sunday’s afternoon game gathered 8,173 spectators at the Nokia Arena.
Vaasa Sport ended Ilves’ seven-game point streak in the hockey league on Sunday, when a team of no less than eight Swedish players defeated Ilves with two Swedish players 4–2.
Ilves’ second Swedish player was a goalkeeper Jonas Gunnarsson. He had a shared history with the Sport forward who had two assists in two seasons from HV71 by Axel Holmström with.
“We’ll probably exchange a few words later after the game. During the game, I didn’t hear Swedish from anyone’s mouth, they didn’t try to psych me out in any way,” Gunnarsson said.
Was there pressure to face so many Swedish players?
“It doesn’t matter which country’s citizens are against. I’ve played hundreds of games against the Swedes, and there was nothing special here either,” Gunnarsson emphasized.
Having received a match penalty later by Zack Hayes the puck shot easily went into the goal.
“The puck took a special turn, and it surprised me. The shot was quite good”, Gunnarsson admitted.
Vaasan Sport celebrated on Sunday as a guest of Ilves in Tampere.
Neither Sport’s head coach Risto Dufva didn’t think the team’s Swedes had a special charge against Gunnarsson.
“All of our players had a special charge today. Judge Nurmion I could quote the words of the song, i.e. ‘The children’s juice time ended sadly, the black angel took the hero of the day'”, said Dufva.
The afternoon match, marketed as a children’s game by Ilves, gathered 8,173 spectators, which is a couple of thousand less than the end-of-autumn holiday game marketed by Tappara on Friday.
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