Number 3 in the league Belfast eliminated #2 Oslo and will set its sights on #1 Helsinki in this round. During the regular season, these teams met 3 times with the Giants beating the Jokerit 5-2 and 6-3 in Northern Ireland, while Helsinki won 7-3 in Finland. Helsinki will have the home ice advantage in this series. Both teams have productive forwards and both have injuries to worry about. Anze Kopitar, the EURO’s top scorer in the regular season, has missed 4 games with a finger injury but should be ready to play in Game 1 for Helsinki. Belfast’s Ondrej Palat and Gabriel Landeskog are both questionable with lower body injuries. Belfast has won 4 Cups in this league, while Helsinki is gunning for its first. Niko Hovinen is having his best of three playoffs for Belfast and has a slightly better save percentage than Kari Ramo of Helsinki. This will be a tight series and a road win would be huge for either club.

Berlin has home ice advantage in a battle of teams that rely heavily on their top forward lines. Vadim Shipachyov, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Eliezer Sherbatov vs. John Tavares, Steven Stamkos and Max Domi should be the key matchup in the series. Goalies Calvin Pickard of Berlin and Juuse Saros of Lisbon have both been great in the playoffs with save percentages around 92. Penalties will be interesting in this series. Berlin had the #2 ranked PP units in the regular season, so they are used to capitalizing on opponents’ penalties. But PPGs will be harder to come by in this series. Lisbon was second best in the league at killing penalties this season.