Christian Heljanko recorded his fourth shutout of the season in a game that Tappara Tampere dominated from start to finish, earning the Finns a two-goal lead ahead of their Champions Hockey League Semi-Finals Return Game against EV Zug in Switzerland next week. Zug struggled to keep all their players on the ice throughout the game, picking up 12 penalty minutes to Tappara's six.

The home team wasted no time getting into the game mounting pressure from the opening puck drop and it paid off, as Mikael Seppälä scored just one minute into the game to put Tappara up by one goal. The defenceman, who is more of an occasional scorer, skated from the blue line in between the circles where he picked up a pass from the boards and rifled the puck into the away team net. Leonardo Genoni stood little chance, as his vision was obscured by multiple players in both blue and orange and white and blue.

Tappara continued to dominate for the remainder of the first period, winning eight out of nine face-offs, racking up nearly four times as many shots on goal than visiting team Zug and even managed to test their powerplay unit two times, but as the buzzer sounded the first 20 minutes of game time up, the score was still just 1-0.

The start of the second period saw Zug get into the game as the Swiss team picked up some solid chances for themselves but at the halfway point of the game, Tappara added goal #2 when Zug's Nico Gross was sent to the box at 31:17 for the second time in the middle frame offering the home team another attempt to test their until that point unsuccessful powerplay unit. Luckily for Tappara, they finally made things click in front of net and Niko Ojamäki fired in a first-timer to double his side's advantage at 32:20.

The Finns pushed for a third goal, especially in the final minutes of the game, but Genoni wouldn't budge and the game headed for its second intermission with the score 2-0 in Tappara's favour.

Third-period play saw both Zug and Tappara try to control the puck for as long as they could, with the Swiss team aiming to limit more potential goals against them that could come back to bite them next week, while Tappara felt comfortable with their two-goal lead. This all led to the game ending with the score still 2-0 after 60 minutes of play.