Lulea Hockey became famous for their comebacks in the CHL playoffs. These comebacks have relied on the goaltending of Joel Lassinantti as a backbone. In Tuesday's final, his saves in the first two periods kept his club close enough to strike in the third. 

by Derek O'Brien

LULEA – He was one of the three finalists for the NordicBet MVP, but while he didn't take any individual hardware home, Joel Lassinantti helped his Lulea Hockey team win the European Trophy as winners of the Champions Hockey League.

“Lassie made some great saves tonight,” Lulea captain Chris Abbott said afterward. “He held us in there until we could finally get the offence going.”

Just as had happened in the semi-finals against Skelleftea AIK, Lulea were out-chanced and out-shot by a highly skilled team, but won. After two periods of the CHL Final, the shots on goal were 22–12 in favour of Frolunda Gothenburg, but in truth that total was flattering to Lulea.

In terms of quality scoring chances it was more like 7–2. Frolunda scored on their first two chances, but Lassinantti closed the door the rest of the way. They both came on rebounds, the first one after just 17 seconds had elapsed, and Lulea were in an 0–2 hole after just 13 minutes of play. 

“That was not the perfect start for us but we couldn't dwell on it too much,” Lassinantti said, recallin the predicament his team was in early on. “We still had two and a half periods left, so we kept going and in the third period we got some goals.”

Eventually the goals did come for Lulea, but if not for the netminding of Lassinantti it could have easily been 4–0 after two periods, which would have forced the team to stage a comeback on the scale of their eighth-final victory against Red Bull Salzburg.

In that suituation, everyone remembers Lulea erasing a five-goal aggregate deficit in one period. What's sometimes forgotten is Lassinantti coming off the bench to relieve starting goalie Daniel Larsson midway through the first period and making some clutch saves to give his team a fighting chance. 

After the game in Salzburg, Lassinantti said of his work that night: “I had a double save on a dangerous rebound somewhere in the game, but the save I’m most proud of was one at the beginning of the third period when they made a pass close to the goal and forced me to move post-to-post. Both the crowd and the player that shot it thought the puck went in and I didn’t really know where the puck ended up, so it was a really good feeling when I figured out I made the save.” 

The Lulea crease has belonged to him ever since, and now they are CHL champs. In the first two periods of Tuesday's final against Frolunda, he made some big saves on a couple of shorthanded odd-man rushes, and denied Artturi Lehkonen on a clear-cut breakaway. He also helped keep the dreaded Frolunda power play at bay.

“They got a couple of power plays there and they were really trying to score, but we got some lucky bounces.” Lassinanti said, referring to Lehkonen's shot through traffic that rang off the goalpost and stayed out – the other great chance for the Finn. “If they had scored there and made it 3–0, it could have killed the game.” 

But instead of getting killed by Frolunda's power play, it was Lulea's power play that did the killing. 

“We got some power plays, especially that five-minute power play, and we scored three goals, so that was great.” 

With the play suddenly down in the Frolunda end of the rink almost the whole time, Lassinantti was almost like a spectator the last 20 minutes, but he knew he had to be sharp because the CHL's best offense could strike at any time.  

“I just had to stay focused all the time and block out all distractions,” until an empty-net goal finally gave Lulea some breathing room. “Yeah, that was great,” Lassinantti recalled with a big grin on his face.

With their team down two goals, the Lulea fans never stopped cheering, and got louder with each goal in the final period, reaching a peak with the final horn. 

 “The whole audience here was perfect and we really enjoyed it,” he said of the support he and his teammates got at Coop Norrbotten Arena. “Today it was full. The whole arena was loud and they were all cheering for us, so it was fun.”

And if you asked those fans who the MVP was, “Lassie! Lassie!” would have been their answer.