For the third straight Champions Hockey League Playoff round, Marek Mazanec and Mountfield HK conceded just one goal over 120 minutes. As a result, Mountfield are off to the CHL Final for the first time following a 3-0 home-ice victory over Djurgården Stockholm, giving them a 6-1 win on aggregate.

For the last several games, Mountfield have shown the ability to play solid defence and wait for their opportunities, and the two-goal lead to start this game played right into their hands in that regard. The return game remained scoreless after an evenly played first period, but Mountfield remained with 53 seconds left of power play time at the start of the second and that paid off for them. Jakub Lev took a pass in his own zone and took it coast to coast, completely undressing defenceman Jesper Pettersson inside the blueline and then going high glove side on Niklas Svedberg.
 

Considering Mountfield had only conceded three goals in their last 16 CHL periods, Djurgården now faced a critical situation, needing to score at least three in a little under two periods. However, try as they might, they just couldn’t penetrate the stifling Mountfield defence to generate any quality scoring chances.

When Richard Nedomlel kept the puck in the Djurgården zone and then fired a rocket from the top of the circle past Svedberg early in the third period, the Swedish team’s situation went from bad to worse. Halfway through the third period, coach Robert Ohlsson pulled Svedberg for a sixth attacker in a desperation move, but Aleš Jergl’s empty-netter less than a minute later put an exclamation point on the Mountfield victory.

The only question to be answered was if Mazanec would post his third shutout in the last six CHL games, and Djurgården were awarded two penalty shots in the last eight minutes. On the first, Mazanec stared down Jacob Josefson and then on the second, Patrik Berglund hit the crossbar. But the fans in Hradec Králové knew their team had its place in the CHL Final firmly in hand and celebrated the final moments away.