JYP Jyvaskyla come away from their home leg of their Round of 32 series with Skelleftea AIK up by four goals, thanks to a 25-save shutout from Pekka Tuokkola. Read more in Gamecentre.

Two years ago, JYP Jyvaskyla were defeated by Skelleftea AIK in the CHL Quarter-Finals. On Tuesday night, they took a big step towards revenge with a 4-0 home-ice win in the first leg of the Round of 32.

It was an evenly-played game between two teams that have been among the best in Europe in recent years, but JYP got the breaks this game, and seemed a little hungrier too. They caught a break on their first goal, as Joonas Nattinen's shoot-around caromed out front to Jani Tuppurainen, who beat Gustaf Lindvall from a sharp angle before the Skelleftea goalie could move across and close the gap. Skelleftea had a golden chance to tie the game on a power play, but with goalie Pekka Tuokkola out of position, Pontus Petterstrom's shot couldn't get through a forest of penalty killers. 

In the last minute of the first period, JYP got a huge 2-0 goal when Mikko Salmio went hard to the net and won a battle for a rebound, putting it past Lindvall. 

Skelleftea tried to get back in the game in the second period and put together a solid 20 minutes, but couldn't find a way to solve Tuokkola, who stopped all 13 shots he faced in the period and all 25 in the game. At the other end, Lindvall made 24 saves in total.

JYP took a commanding 3-0 lead early in the third period when they converted on a 5-on-3 power play – Tuomas Pihlman in front finishing off a nice tic-tac-toe passing play. 

At that point, Skelleftea was thinking less about winning this game and more about closing the aggregate gap to give themselves a better chance to win it next week at home.  Again Petterstrom had a great chance but Tuokkola robbed him with a glove save – probably his best of the game.

Skelleftea then ran into penalty trouble, which interrupted their momentum, and Antti Suomela made it a four-goal difference with a shot from the blue line with less than three minutes to play.

"It was a good game overall," said JYP coach Mirko Virtanen. "Strategically, we were successful and we managed to suffocate the opponent’s offensive game very early on their own defensive zone. We managed to kill their speed and they didn’t get too much of their dangerous skating speed. Our toughness in the battles was good."

He added, "There is obviously room for improvement; even though we scored one goal on the power play, we had many more opportunities and our power play was not as good overall as it can be. But our opponent was tough tonight, so it was because of that as well. They were able to generate pressure and they played really aggressively on their penalty kill. Also, because of injuries, we had some guys back and we had to fix our power-play units. They weren’t really that ready yet and we need to improve that. Overall it was a good performance."

That puts JYP in the driver's seat heading into the second leg in northern Sweden. However, those with a keen memory will also recall that JYP had a four-goal lead at one point in their series with Skelleftea two years ago. 

To that suggestion, Virtanen said, "Well, we have a completely new team here and I don’t even remember how many of those players are still on the team. I don’t think they think about that. This is a new and challenging place to be in right now."