The Malmö Redhawks won their third straight game in Group B, 6-2 over visiting KalPa Kuopio - the only team to blemish their record on the first night of the competition. Six different players scored the Malmö goals, with Andy Miele, Rhett Rakhshani and Lukas Haudum recorded two points each.
Malmö’s power play was KalPa’s undoing, with the Redhawks going 4-for-4, while KalPa went 1-for-6. The first goal of the game was a power-play goal at 7:16 on a one-time blast from Miele. Then it was 2-0 just 1:04 later when Johan Olofsson finished off a play following a turnover, and Nichlas Hardt made it 3-0 before the end of the first period.
If the outcome was still in doubt, Fredrik Händemark erased it with another power-play goal in the 25th minute. It was 5-0 when Alex Lavoie got KalPa on the board late in the second period on the power play, and then Frank Gymer made it a three-goal game early in the third following a forced turnover in the Malmö zone. But if KalPa were entertaining any thoughts of another comeback, Nils Andersson erased them with the game’s last goal midway through the third period.
"We got a really bad start, Malmö was leading the game at the beginning, but I think we came back better towards the end. But Malmö was the better team today."Frank Gymer, forward, KalPa Kuopio
"We didn’t really think about the last game against KalPa today. We talked about that after that game, but this was a new game with new possibilities. It wasn’t anything we thought about before the game, but we focused on getting a good start today and I think we did that."Nichlas Hardt, forward, Malmö Redhawks