How fitting is it that the winning goal in Game 7 of the Season 16 EURO Cup finals was scored by John Tavares, the league’s all-time leading scorer? Even though he’s won nine individual trophies, this is the first time he’s been on a champion team.
When John Legend scored, Berlin went up 3-0 and the party in Germany was rocking like never before. The Smurfs were ahead of the resilient and clever Minsk Hussars who hammered them 4 days earlier in the same building.
But the venue was significantly quieter about three-and-a-half minutes later because Maxim Chudinov and Frank Vatrano made it a tense one-goal game with more than 13 minutes to go. Plenty of time for the Hussars to shatter the home crowd yet again. To make matters worse, veteran Staffan Kronwall took a penalty to put Minsk on the powerplay. And he took another penalty on his first shift out of the box. Fortunately for Berlin and goalie Calvin Pickard, Minsk also penalties after each Kronwall infraction. And Berlin buckled down, allowing just 3 shots in the period in addition to the ones Chudinov and Kronwall scored on.
The game was marred by controversy when the Berlin cheerleading squad skated onto the ice right after Kronwall’s first penalty and did stretching exercises directly in front of the Minsk bench. Cheerleading captain Karolin Glockner later said (in German) “Oh, we’re sorry. We thought the game was over.”
Sepp Blatter, the league’s director of player safety and discipline, let the incident go unpunished, saying “Wow, look at the time on my new Rolex. We better keep things rolling along here or we’ll fall behind schedule.”
En route to winning its third-ever EURO Cup, Berlin finished second overall in the regular season, behind only Copenhagen, and then they beat Zurich (4-0), Kosice (4-2), and Munich (4-3 on an OT goal by Loic Lamperier in Game 7). Lamperier scored the first goal of Wednesday’s game, his 11th of the playoffs.
Minsk finished third overall and got past London (4-1), Oslo (4-3 on an OT goal by Aaron Ekblad) and Copenhagen (4-1) to reach the Finals.
Five forwards who played in the Finals were atop the individual scoring list (Berlin’s Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Artturi Lehkonen, John Tavares and Travis Konecny, as well as Hussar Fyodor Malykhin) while Minsk’s Par Arlbrandt was right behind them even though he missed four games with an injury. Lehkonen led everyone in plus/minus (+18 in 24 games).
The league will give Berlin time to continue their never-ending celebration and then move along to the next season in a week or less. GMs who have not renewed for Season 17 can do so now to get a discount.
