Liiga Review: Regular season ends with Tappara and Anton Levtchi taking the titles

LIIGA / Artikkeli
League's scoring leader Anton Levtchi has gone undrafted but might spark some interest overseas.
Kuva © Tiia Mahkonen

After a nearly seven month stretch, Liiga's regular season concluded. Covid was still evident with a minor pause in the season, a month without crowds, and each team heading to quarantine one by one.

For some, the effects were worse than others. Lukko, for example, had to entirely cancel two of their games when they could not be rescheduled before the end of the regular season. Therefore, Liiga switched to point per game average to determine the teams advancing to the playoffs.

In the end, Tappara, Jukurit, Ilves, TPS, HIFK and Kärpät were the teams that advanced straight to the quarterfinals that started on Sunday 27th of March. Meanwhile, HPK, KooKoo, Pelicans and Lukko still needed to battle each other for a place in the top 8.

The qualifying round was played as a two-game match-up, where the team with more wins would advance to the quarterfinals. If the series ended up in a tie, a sudden death third game was played right after the second.

HPK−Lukko battle ended with Lukko advancing with one win from the first game, as their second match-up ended in a tie.

KooKoo−Pelicans turned into a thriller with the series being tied after two games. It was Kookoo's Czech player Radek Koblížek's goal in the second period of the sudden death third game that lead the team to victory and to the quarterfinals.

Young stars at the top of the standings

Tappara won the regular season champion title with just two point difference to Jukurit. Both team's best scorers, forwards Anton Levtchi and Petrus Palmu, were the league's top scoring leaders and best goal scorers.

Levtchi, an undrafted 26-year-old left winger, scored 26 goals and assisted 35 times in a total of 55 games. Palmu, a 24-year-old former Vancouver Canucks draftee, also scored 26 goals and assisted 33 times in 59 games, which put him in second place after Levtchi.

Tappara and Jukurit goaltenders also took the lead in most shutouts in the league. Both Tappara's Christian Heljanko and Jukurit's Oskari Salminen had nine shutouts this season.

Liiga's best scoring defenceman title went to Vili Saarijärvi, 24, who is still on the Arizona Coyotes' reserve list, despite last playing in AHL in the 2019−20 season. Saarijärvi scored 17 goals and assisted 26 times in 52 games. Next season Saarijärvi is reportedly heading to the Swiss league.

Kärpät rookies, forward Ville Koivunen, a Carolina Hurricanes prospect, and goaltender Joel Blomqvist, a Pittsburgh Penguins prospect, shined in their respective categories.

Koivunen, 19, led rookie scoring with 11+18 in 53 games. Blomqvist, 20, played 20 games this season but had the best goals against average with 1,32, and his save percentage was 94,02%. He also recorded five shutouts during the season.

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