It was a dominant performance, Ilves Tampere needed a powerplay goal late in regulation time to tie it and then an overtime goal by Eemeli Suomi to beat Unia Oświęcim 4-3. The shots were 42-14 in Ilves’ favour but Linus Lundin, Unia’s Swedish goaltender, was in peak form.

Unia’s Hampus Olsson got the first period’s only two penalties. His team killed off the first, but Ilves opened the scoring with two seconds left in the second one at 17:06. Daniel Gazda sent a cross-ice pass to Kasper Björkqvist, whose shot beat Lundin inside the far post.

Less than a minute later, Unia tied it when Henry Karjalainen circled the net and fed out front to Krystian Dziubiński, whose shot from through traffic found the back of the net.

At 25:36, Unia took the lead on the Polish team’s first powerplay of the game. Moving the puck around the zone, Kamil Sadłocha found Dziubiński in the slot, who fired it home.

At that point, Ilves really started putting on the pressure but Lundin was almost like a brick wall, with saves off Matias Mäntykivi and Samuli Ratinen being particularly impressive.

Finally, with 3:15 left in the middle frame, they tied it back up. After Ilves controlled the puck for a considerable length of time, Ville Meskanen from the point fed in front to an unmolested Otto Latvala, who had time to pick the corner on Lundin.

After holding a 27-12 edge in shots through the first 40 minutes, Ilves were back at it again early in the third and Ludin made perhaps his best save of the night, robbing Adam Najman, who had a wide-open side of the net after a backdoor pass.

In the middle of the third period, Ilves had more chances on another powerplay but couldn’t score. And then, on a powerplay of their own with 5:39 to go, amazingly, Unia went back in front on a bullet from the point by Jere Vertanen, with Karjalainen drawing his second assist.

With 3:15 to play, Ilves went back to the powerplay and, a minute later, Dominik Pavlát was pulled to make it a 6-on-4 advantage. With room to move the puck around, Najman found Arttu Pelli in the slot, who beat Lundin with a quick shot.

And just 23 seconds into overtime, Suomi finished it on a brilliant individual play, taking a pass from Najman near the blueline, making a move to beat a Unia defender towards the boards and then cutting in to beat Lundin on a forehand deke.