There was drama, there were comebacks. On Tuesday night the two Czech teams Ocelari Trinec and Bili Tygri Liberec as well as JYP Jyvaskyla from Finland and the Vaxjo Lakers from Sweden qualified for the semi-finals of the Champions Hockey League.

In January the home-and-away semi-finals will be played between JYP Jyvaskyla and Ocelari Trinec, and between the Vaxjo Lakers and Bili Tygri Liberec. The winners will play the one-game CHL final on 6th February 2018.

Only one of the four semi-finalists managed to win both games. One week earlier Ocelari Trinec beat Brynas Gavle 3-1 thanks to three unanswered third-period markers. On the road in Sweden on Tuesday evening they added two more goals early in the game and eventually won 5-3. Brynas’ comeback attempt failed despite a 44-29 shot-on-goal advantage. Eight different players scored the goals for Ocelari in the two games.

JYP Jyvaskyla prevented an all-Czech semi-final clash by winning on the road in the country’s second-biggest city of Brno. The week before on home ice JYP and Kometa Brno ended up with a 3-3 tie. Three goals from just six shots on goal and a hat trick from Jan Suss gave Kometa the hope to rise to the next stage. But on home ice it was JYP that started like a comet. Jarkko Immonen opened the scoring after five minutes before Juuso Puustinen and Janne Kolehmainen added two more markers for a comfortable three-goal first-period lead. Kometa came as close as 3-4 late in the third period but an empty netter gave JYP the 5-3 win and a semi-final ticket.

Two teams that came back from a loss in the first game will meet in the other semi-final. Bili Tygri Liberec was the second Czech team to qualify after beating 2009 CHL champs ZSC Lions Zurich in shootout. The “White Tigers” had lost their home game 1-0 on an Inti Pestoni goal. In a defensive game in Zurich they had trouble eliminating that deficit until Lukas Krenzelok opened the scoring at 1:39 of the third period. With an aggregate score of 1-1 the teams went into overtime and eventually a shootout. There Martin Bakos scored the shootout-winner for Liberec.

Swedish teams won the last three editions of the CHL with Lulea HF in 2015 and back-to-back titles by Frolunda Gothenburg in 2016 and 2017. This time the Swedish league leader Vaxjo Lakers will be the only representative from the country in the semi-finals after a comeback quarter-final win against Swiss leader SC Bern. SCB had won the first game 3-2 before 13,629 fans one week ago but wasn’t able to defend the one-goal cushion in Sweden. The Swiss tied an early lead through Andrew Calof with a power-play goal from Mark Arcobello but three unanswered goals from Liam Reddox, Elias Pettersson and Robert Rosen settled the case and Vaxjo won 4-2. Arcobello scored the second goal for SC Bern with six minutes left to play but his team didn’t manage to come back and tie the aggregate score.

Visit www.championshockeyleague.com for more information, game highlights

MARTIN MERK