Karpat Oulu's 5-3 win over Krefeld Pinguine means that Krefeld is out and Vitkovice Ostrava advance. Read more in Gamecentre. 

Krefeld Pinguine needed to beat Karpat to advance to the next round as the teams met in Oulu, with Vitkovice Ostrava waiting on the result of the game to see if they would advance instead. For a while, it looked like Die Pinguine might do it, but a bad start to the third period finished them off.

Krefeld got the best possible start in Northern Finland, going ahead through Marco Rosa with just 2:26 played. However their lead lasted just under 10 minutes until Mikael Ruohomaa tied the game at 12:10. That's how the score stayed heading into the second period, despite the visitors being heavily outshot in the opening period.

With just over five minutes played in the middle session, Niklas Olausson turned the game on its head by putting Karpat ahead; however Krefeld rallied and duly tied the game 84 seconds later when Lukas Koziol batted in a bouncing puck off the face-off to make it two each – a scoreline which held going into the last 20 minutes.

The start of the third period was a nightmare for the visitors, who were only a goal away from qualification with 20 minutes left to play. Goals from Jani Hakanpaa (41:00), Saku Maenalanen (42:21), and John Albert (44:37) put Krefeld three goals down with less than five minutes played.

To their credit, Krefeld responded after coach Franz Fritzmeier called a time-out – Herberts Vasiljevs with the goal to bring the visitors back to within two at 45:47. As the clocked ticked down, Krefeld pulled their netminder with well over three minutes to play, as they needed as many goals – however, a late minor on Vasiljevs put them a skater down, and the time wound down to see Karpat secure the 5-3 win – Krefeld eliminated, and Vitkovice going through.

"We knew the Penguine were coming here to fight for all the points and to get into the playoffs," Karpat coach Kai Suikkanen began. "It was a very hard game for us. They're a big team with strong guys and good in one-on-one situations. I think they played very well. We had a good start to the third period with those goals. The second period was really bad for us. I'm very happy about this victory and winning this group. John Albert had a big game for us today. He has been out for five weeks and played a really good game. We're going to have a great player in him."

Fritzmeier responded, "It was a pretty good game and I'm proud of my team because we played against one of the best teams in Europe. If you score three goals in Oulu, you have to win. Five goals against us was too much. At the end of the day, Karpat were a little bit better team. You saw it when they scored three goals in the last period. But this was the perfect match for us to bring our confidence up for the season. It was fun to play here in Oulu. Congratulations to Karpat."