TURKU, Finland – TPS Turku created a budding hockey fever in the city last season when the team went past the wild card playoff round for the first time in five years. The club that hails from Finland’s 19th century capital has won the Finnish title ten times, including eight between 1989 and 2001. It reached the final in 2004, lost it, and has since then mostly been a bottom half team.

Until this season.

TPS finished sixth in the regular season, its best finish since 2005 when it finished sixth as well, a berth that guaranteed it real playoffs. In SM-liiga, the teams finishing between 7th and 10th play a best-of-three preliminary round for the two last quarterfinal spots.

In 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 that had been TPS’s slot.

The club was in financial turmoil - like many other clubs - and the 1990s powerhouse that featured Saku Koivu, Marko Kiprusoff, Aki-Petteri Berg, Mikko Koivu, Miikka Kiprusoff, Kimmo Rintanen, Kimmo Timonen, Tomi Kallio, Sami Salo, Antti Aalto, and a bus load of other high calibre players who had either been lucky to be born in Turku or had gravitated to the Vladimir Yurzinov hockey school, was just a memory.

While TPS was scrambling to get its finances in order - Miikka Kiprusoff is one of the biggest sharehodlers these days - the product on the ice didn’t help at the box office. The Turku areena, built for the 1991 World Championship, was most nights half-empty, even if you were an optimist.

In 2004, the year TPS went to the final, the team averaged 7,705 spectators per game, second in the league. Somewhat surprisingly, their average went down in the playoffs, but 6,984 was still third best in SM-liiga in 2004.

The year after, the regular season average had dropped by 500 and the playoff average by 1500. In 2006 and 2007, the team averaged around 6,400 in the regular season - still third highest in the league - and about 3000, give or take a hundred, for its lone pre-playoff game.

In 2008, the regular season average was just under 6000, and in 2009, barely over 5000, but still, at 5,139, fifth biggest in Finland.

The light at the end of the tunnel was that for the first time since 2004, the playoff average was higher than the regular season average, and at 10,492, the team averaged almost 2,500 spectators more than Jokerit, second on the list.

Turku had woken up.

This season, the regular season average bounced back over 6,000, and in the playoffs, Turku has been the place to be. TPS’s 9,524 is the best average attendance, and that’s before the finals which will pack the Turku Areena to its 11,820-seat capacity.

Yes, the finals.

The new trend that started to emerge last season and that shows in the attendances began with the firing of head coach Hannu Virta and hiring of former SM-liiga player Kai Suikkanen as the new bench boss. When Suikkanen took over, the team was dead last in the standings, so finishing tenth could be considered a respectable accomplishment. Even better, for the first time since 2005, TPS was actually in the playoffs after it beat HIFK Helsinki in two straight games.

TPS pushed JYP to their heels, but couldn’t stop the Jyväskylä team that went on to win the whole thing.

Suikkanen is something of a late bloomer as a coach. the 50-year-old former Kärpät Oulu player - and Hannu Virta’s teammate on the 1991 TPS SM-liiga championship team - who retired in 1991, returned to hockey just some five years ago when he was coaching in the Suomi-sarja two rungs down the hockey ladder in Finland. Three years ago he made his debut in Mestis, the league just below SM-liiga, and turned Kajaani Hokki into champion. Suikkanen himself was named coach of the year.

This fall, though, last year’s playoff run didn’t seem as impressive anymore - two wins in the quarterfinal - and it was easy to pass as a fluke. Losing honourably is a lot easier than winning, and in most experts’ - add air quotes around the word, if you wish - pre-season predictions, TPS was in the bottom four. (Including this writer’s).

Even at the beginning of the playoffs, TPS was considered an also-ran. In the 35 years since the birth of SM-liiga, only three times has the final been played without either the regular season winner, or the runner-up and vever before have the fifth and sixth-seeded teams played for the title. This season, TPS, the regular season sixth, will take on HPK Hämeenlinna, a team that finished fifth, two points ahead of TPS in the regular season.

HPK also won the title in 2006, the last time the finalists finished third or lower in the regular season. At the outset of the semi-finals, the mathematical probability - based on past performance - of HPK and TPS playing for the championship was just 22 percent.

TPS, having won the first final on Thursday, is just three wins away from their 11th championship. The odds are suddenly looking much better.

NOTEBOOK:

• Jussi Rynnäs, Ässät, signed a two-year two-way deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The 22-year-old goalie led the league in save percentage, 92.92%, and was coveted by several NHL teams.
• Sami Kapanen, KalPa, leads the league in playoff scoring, with six goals and 13 points in 12 games. KalPa has one game remaining when it takes on JYP in the bronze medal game on Friday. Kapanen, who missed the Olympics due to injury, will then join Team Finland for their World Championship training camp.
• TPS goalie David Leggio leads the league in save percentage in the playoffs with 94.94%. Coach Suikkanen has used both goalies evenly, and Leggio has played five games while Atte Engren has played six, and has posted a save percentage of 92.98, fifth in the league.

RISTO PAKARINEN