In a wild return game in Linkoping, HC Davos overcame a three-goal deficit on aggregate to pull even, but a late surge put Linkoping HC ahead to stay. Read more in Gamecentre. 

by Csaba N. Devai 

Usually the team that scores four goals wins the game, or at least forces overtime. Well, that wasn’t the case in Davos last Tuesday, so HC Davos arrived in Sweden knowing that they had to score at least three goals to equalize the 7-4 score on aggregate. 

To put an emphasis on their objective, they shocked the home crowd with an early short-handed goal. With only five minutes gone in the first period Robert Kousal skated through the home defence and put the puck on net. That shot was stopped by Marcus Hogberg, but Andres Ambuehl arrived in front of the net and he put the puck into the empty net. The away team didn’t slow down after taking the lead, and three minutes later Marc Weiser’s shot changed the aggregate score to 7-6 in favour of Linkoping. Both teams felt the heat of the game warming up, and they played very physically with lots of hits and penalties included. However, another goal didn’t arrive, so the first period ended with Linkoping being up by one on aggregate.

In the second period, both teams had their chances but goalkeepers Hogberg and Gilles Senn didn’t let anything into their cages. Mainly Linkoping were able to create quality chances, as it seemed like the pressure caused Davos to make more mistakes then their opponents. Thanks to the goaltending performances at each end, the second period ended with Davos still being up by two in the game, but trailing by one on aggregate.

The third period started with a blocked shot from Linkoping, but they weren’t the ones who scored the first goal in the period. At 46:19, during a power play, Robert Kousal turned Beat Forster’s excellent pass into an assist, which meant that on aggregate the score was tied at seven. However, the away team couldn’t be happy for very long, it took only three minutes until Linkoping answered with a goal. During a delayed penalty, the home team attacked  6-on-5, and Niclas Bergforg’s shot put Linkoping back in the driving seat. 

Davos came very close to an other goal, but in the crucial moments something always stood in their way. Five minutes before the end of the game Linkoping secured their lead on aggregate, after Broc Little scored from Kristian Nakyva’s pass, which came from his own zone. In the final minutes, Davos couldn’t put enough pressure on the home team’s goal, and the score from then on didn’t change.

"I'm not happy," a frustrated Arno del Curto said after, shaking his head. "We had the three goals, we should have been going to overtime, and then 6-on-5 ..." he trailed off. "We tried to avoid the big mistakes we made in Davos, and mostly we did. I'm happy with the performance of the team, and that we won a game in Sweden with a young team and some good players missing, but I'm not happy with the result."

Linkoping lost the game but won the series in another thrilling game, with an insane 9-7 result on aggregate.