For the 2014-15 season, Swedish clubs Frolunda Gothenburg and Lulea Hockey got to face each other in a total of 13 games. The teams played a tough Swedish Hockey League game in Gothenburg Tuesday night and with two more Champions Hockey League quarter-final games coming up in next couple weeks, they're not finished.

by Efraim Larsson

GOTHENBURG – To add to the Champions Hockey League Final and the five regular season games in the Swedish Hockey League last season, the two clubs Lulea Hockey and Frolunda Gothenburg got to play an extremely intense quarter-final series in the SHL playoffs. As you may remember, Lulea took an ostensibly impregnable 3–1 lead in wins in the best-of-seven series and were expected to seal the deal, but Frolunda came back and won three consecutive games to steal the ticket to the semi-finals.

As it now seems, the clubs can’t get enough of each other as they’re drawn to face one another in this season’s CHL quarter-finals, starting in Lulea on 1 December and  concluding in Gothenburg on 8 December. On top of that, as they faced each other last night and will do so again on 12 December, they are in a tight schedule with a total of four match-ups in a time-span of 19 days!

Round 1 to Frolunda

Yesterday’s game probably won’t be remembered as a well-performed story, but rather a tough battle with Frolunda getting a couple of lucky goals. The Indians won the game 4–3, and as Lulea head coach Joakim Fagervall said at the press conference after the game, Lulea “were involved in all seven goals in the game.”

Artturi Lehkonen gave Frolunda a 1–0 lead in the first period, but it was a Lulea defenceman who poked the puck into the net with his stick. The same went for Andreas Johnson' s 2–0 goal in the second, which was meant to be a pass but ended up going in the net off a defender.

After three straight Lulea goals, Henrik Tommernes’s slap shot bounced in off yet another Lulea player with merely two seconds left in the second period to make it 3–3. Then in the third period, Lulea’s Lucas Wallmark made a bad pass to give Spencer Abbott a breakaway that led to game-winning 4–3 goal.

Lennart Petrell had this to say about the game to Lulea’s official website: 

“They came out really hard on us. We did a good job, keeping them off the scoreboard at the beginning and that kind of gave us energy after killing their momentum a bit. I think we had our moments with a couple of great scoring chances and attacks, and to be honest we had two or three tough goals against. The late power-play goal in the second period was really tough. I'm not goingto say it killed our game, but it was a bit unfortunate. I think we were a little bit unlucky with the bounces today.”

But there are possibly a few positive parts that you can carry into the future?

“Yes, I think that during the last two weeks we’ve been better as a team and even if it would’ve felt better to take a win today I really like the steps we’re making forward as a team. You can’t win every game, but I think that if we fix a couple of small details and keep working on the positive parts of the last games we will definitely start winning a great amount of games.”

Frolunda won their third consecutive game and remain on top of the SHL standings, but according to head coach Roger Ronnberg, they can play much better than what they did today.

“The game went back-and-forth quite a lot. I’m satisfied with our performance in the first period where we started sharp and alert and created chances. But we’re giving ourselves up in the second period and it’s frustrating when we’re not playing as we should, as we have such a skilled team. But we managed to come back to win the game in the third, even if we can do even better.”

Frolunda took the first of the four rounds, and since they also won the first meeting of the season, 4–2 in Lulea's Coop Norrbotten Arena in September and the last three games of their playoff series in March, they have now won five straight games against Lulea.

The first of two quarter-final battles occur in Lulea on Tuesday, 1 December at 20:00 CET. Which team will take the advantage into halftime?