Buckle up.
You’re about to watch one of the greatest playoff hockey games ever played.
Helsingin IFK (HIFK) is a Finnish hockey club in Liiga, the highest level of professional hockey in Finland. HIFK is currently locked in a quarterfinal playoff series with JYP Jyvaskyla. A win for HIFK would mean a 3-2 lead and a chance to close out the series at home. But on Wednesday with the series tied 2-2, HIFK’s season took a bleak turn when JYP Jyvaskyla took a commanding 5-0 lead early in the game.
By the end of the first period HIFK showed signs of life, cutting JYP’s lead down from 5-0 to 5-2. If HIFK was at all nervous, you would never have known from the team’s official twitter account.
After one and a half periods, which featured eight combined goals, the game somehow began to gain even more momentum. Down 6-2 HIFK is able to score three goals, each more ridiculous than the next, in just over four minutes to send them into the third trailing by only one goal. Perhaps the most beautiful goal of that stretch came with the game at 6-3. An HIFK player dawning a GOLDEN HELMET was able to pick the pocket of a JYP player behind the goalie, which resulted in a tic-tac-toe finish in front of the net.
With just under eight minutes to play in the third period, HIFK finally score an equalizer for their fourth unanswered goal.
Then in overtime with the hockey gods seemingly on their side, HIFK fulfill their prophecy as the chosen ones.
After facing two separate multi-goal deficits, HIFK storm back with five unanswered goals, the last with only 16 seconds left in overtime to pull out a gutsy 7-6 win. After scoring his fourth and final goal of the game to lead his team to one of the greatest playoff comebacks in hockey history, we’re pretty sure Patrik Carlsson will have statues built outside of HIFK’s Helsinki arena.
Let this be a lesson to all of your budding young hockey players. Never give up. History remembers the bold.
(H/T – r/hockey)
