First leg of CHL quarter-final in Finland coming up

Four Swiss teams competed in the Champions Hockey League in August. Now that the group stage and round of 16 have been played, only EVZ is still in the competition – the ZSC Lions, Lausanne and SC Bern have already had to pull out.

It is therefore up to the Zug team to keep the Swiss flag flying for as long as possible. To do so, the EVZ must prevail against Finnish representative Lukko Rauma in the quarter-finals in a first and second leg. The first leg takes place on Wednesday, 3 December at 17:30 CET in Finland (live on MySports), the second leg two weeks later on Tuesday, 16 December at 19:45 in the OYM hall.

As a reminder: If the first leg in Rauma ends in a draw after 60 minutes, the game is over. The aggregate score after two games is decisive for advancing in the CHL playoffs – if both teams have scored the same number of goals after 120 minutes of play, overtime will be played (even if the result of the second leg is 2:1, for example).

EVZ travelled to Rauma on Tuesday morning. After the Zurich-Helsinki flight, a three-hour bus journey took them to the venue in south-west Finland. The Zug team is very familiar with the local conditions. They already faced Rauma in the regular season, and the venue was the Kivikylän Areena, as on Wednesday, when EVZ suffered a narrow 1-0 defeat on 7 October.

On paper, the quarter-final affair is wide open. Rauma has won the Finnish championship twice so far (most recently in 2021) and is currently in fifth place. The Finns finished the CHL regular season in fifth place with four wins and two defeats. Storhamar Hamar were eliminated in the round of 16. After turning a 0:2 deficit into a 3:2 victory in the final third of the first leg in Norway, the Finns had less trouble in the second leg (5:2 win) and defeated Storhamar by a total score of 8:3.

But the EVZ are also in good spirits going into the CHL quarter-final. After all, the memories of the first leg of the round of 16, when Sparta Prague was swept out of the OYM hall 6:0, are still vivid. Although they suffered an annoying defeat against HC Ajoie in the National League on Saturday, Head Coach Michael Liniger’s team had previously celebrated two home victories in a row, including one over in-form Genève-Servette. A number of injured players are gradually returning to the team, with Elia Riva and Loris Wey back in the line-up last week and Leonardo Genoni also making the trip to Finland.

The Zug team would like to continue its successful CHL campaign on Wednesday and ensure that Switzerland stays in the competition for as long as possible.