HIFK is the champion of Finland again! The players showed their character and told what a championship team is made of | Sport

The women of HIFK overcame the difficulties during the season and were able to raise the championship trophy again in front of their home crowd, when Kiekko-Espoo fell with a 3–1 match victory.

HIFK started this season from behind, as the team received a penalty of six series points after losing it Michaela Pejzlova last season without representation. Despite this, HIFK came second in the regular season.

In the playoffs, the team first beat Kärpät directly 3–0, but lost the first semi-final match to HPK. Also in the finals, Kiekko-Espoo won the teams’ first meeting.

– This team has a really big heart, a really tough character. We were able to grow and develop our own game within each play off series, HIFK’s head coach Saara Niemi boasted as he waited for the medals to be handed out.

In Niemi’s opinion, the new champion team is well built. The lineup includes young players from their own career path, good foreign players and experienced Finnish players.

It brought the championship again this year, even though in the fourth final game Kiekko-Espoo was looking for the necessary win, especially in the last set, and HIFK had to be on the defensive. Despite the turnover, the people from Espoo did not manage to get the puck into the home team’s goal.

One of HIFK’s decisive players was the goalkeeper Miia Vainio, who made 24 saves in the fourth final. Vainio got the blocking responsibility in the semi-finals, when Kia Lahtinen was not fit to play, and played the rest of the matches after that.

Another of HIFK’s key players this season was Julia Liikala, who also scored 1+1 in the last match. According to Liikala, the season was long and tough, so the championship feels good.

– We’ve come a long way, sometimes we’ve been down, but we picked ourselves up pretty well and picked ourselves up, Liikala said and told the formula of a successful championship team.

– The biggest thing is that the team is together. It doesn’t help that there are 20 good individuals if they can’t find common ground. Everything has to come from the heart, that we go together and win together.

On the same lines was the team captain, a living legend of Finnish women’s hockey, Karoliina Rantamäki46. Rantamäki has ten prestigious medals and Finnish championships in the carpentry trade, but still the freshest tasted the best.

– This is the most valuable. This feels so good that I don’t remember the previous ones anymore, he laughed.

Rantamäki, who played his first championship match more than 30 years ago, recalled that last year HIFK was superior, but this season the situation was different. According to him, unity was one of HIFK’s secrets.

– That’s the team. That the team is everything. We have incredibly good guys, a good team, and of course skill and the desire to win, he listed and assured that the career does not end here.

– Those skates are still moving!

Saara Niemi admitted that for both coaches and players, breaking the series is a difficult place. The matter had been talked about many times, but despite that, the fear of losing crept in at the latest when Kiekko-Espoo started the push.

– No matter how much it is said that one change at a time and we enjoy it, we give it our all, but there is always that extra extra tension. We had to be very defensive today, but we were still able to score the necessary goals. This team had a lot of character and it showed this spring.