Chris Abbott has played for Lulea Hockey for a while now. He and twin brother Cam arrived in northern Sweden in 2009, and in that time have helped the club to at least the semi-finals in European club tournaments each of the past four seasons. This year, they won it for the second time, but had the pleasure to do it on home ice in front of their own passionate fans. 

by Derek O'Brien

LULEA – After the game, in the aftermath of their victory in the Champions Hockey League Final, one of the most popular players was one of their longest tenured players – captain Chris Abbott.

Along with his twin brother Cam, the two natives of Sarnia, Ontario are now in their sixth season together with the northern Swedish club. Chris is now in his third season as captain – in his first season, Lulea won the European Trophy, beating fellow Swedish club Farjestad Karlstad 2–0 in the final game in Bratislava. This time, they again beat a Swedish club in the final, but this time got to do it in front of their own fans.

This year, comebacks have been the theme of Lulea's CHL run. Most notably, they erased a five-goal deficit in the second-last period of their eighth-final series against Red Bull Salzburg. Then in the quarters, they surrendered the first goal against Lukko Rauma before again reeling off five straight goals to put themselves in firm control.

In the final, they trailed 2–0 after 40 minutes, but scored four in a row in the third. The comeback began with a quick goal on the power play, when Cam won the draw back to Kristian Nakyva. His shot fooled Linus Fernstrom to get the Lulea ball rolling once again.

“I dunno, that's been our story through the playoffs of the Champions League,” Captain Chris said on the ice, while still celebrating his team's victory. “We came back in Salzburg against Red Bull, and in Rauma against Lukko. We didn't make it easy on ourselves today, down by two goals heading into the third period, but we found a way to get it done.”

Looking around the arena at the fans, some still cheering in the stands, some down on the ice asking for pictures with their heroes, he added, unprompted, “I can't say enough about the fans here in the arena – just a great atmosphere.”

Your line (Chris centring Cam and Emil Sylvegard) started the game and you gave up a goal just 17 seconds in. What did that do to the team?

Obviously that's not the start we wanted to have, but it was a bit of a fluke goal. I tipped that shot right on the net and . . . Joel (Lassinantti) doesn't usually put rebounds right out in front very often . . . Yeah, that's not what we wanted, but we kept going and going until we found a way to score.

The first two periods you gave up a lot more chances than you had. What can you say about the goaltending of Lassinantti?

Lassie made some great saves tonight. He held us in there until we could finally get the offence going.

Down 2–0 after two periods, as captain, did you say anything to the team during the intermission?

Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody to a man was pissed off, but we knew we were still in it and had 20 minutes to turn it around. We never doubted ourselves for a minute. We got a power play there that we were able to convert on and that made the difference.

The power play hadn't been working for you, then suddenly it did in the third with three goals.

We talked about that, about keeping things simple and to play just like we do 5-on-5 and that's what we did. We won the faceoff and got the shot on net. The three goals were all like that – just getting traffic in front and putting the puck on net. That's what we had to do and it worked.

The Champions Hockey League is over now, but your hockey season isn't. You're in eighth place in the Swedish Hockey League. How does this win help you with the rest of the season?

This really gives us a lot of confidence heading into the last few games of the regular season, for sure. We beat a couple of the best teams in our league to get here – first Skelleftea and now Frolunda, so we know we can beat anybody. So yeah, we've got some big games coming up, but first we're going to enjoy this one for the next couple of days.