Friboug-Gotteron are on to the CHL Quarter-Finals after two draws against KalPa Kuopio and an overtime goal from Yannick Rathgeb. Read more in Gamecentre. 

by Steven Ellis

120 minutes of play wasn’t enough to decide the winner between Fribourg-Gotteron and KalPa Kuopio, but Fribourg would take the 3-2 victory on Tuesday and the 4-3 victory overall in the Round of 16 to move on to the Quarter-Finals in December. 

It took just 7:24 of play, but KalPa were able to take the 2-1 lead in the series with a great goal. Playing with the man advantage, Matias Myttynen broke in on the net on the power play and fired a hard wrist shot past former Switzerland World Junior star Benjamin Conz for the 1-0 lead.

But Fribourg bounced back to tie the game and the series up. Greg Mauldin would score a very similar goal after taking a pass from Killian Mottet, rushing in and beating Severi Kinnunen with a quick wrister to make it 1-1 in the game and 2-2 in the series. It was an important goal for Fribourg, who had an 11-6 shot advantage after a period of play.

Fribourg was hungry to take the lead, and they were able to take their first advantage of the series at 24:02. Julien Sprunger made a great play to steal the puck off of a KalPa defender and went in on a 2-on-1, feeding Michal Birner in front. Birner had no issue with the puck, tapping it in at the right post to make it 2-1 for the Swiss-based club.

KalPa wasn’t ready to let Fribourg’s lead go to their head. With just over five minutes to go in the second, Tommi Jokinen skated near the net and beat Conz with a quick chance, tying the game at two-apiece in a truly back-and-forth contest.

With no goals in the third, the two teams would play 3-on-3 overtime to decide the winner. After just 1:20 of play in the extra period, Yannick Rathgeb would use his lethal backhand to beat Dennis Godla through the legs to win the game and thus move Fribourg on to the next round.