Tappara is crowned the champion of the inaugural eLiiga season!

Photo credit: Jussi Jääskeläinen

NHLGamers,

Over the past few months, Telia Esports has been running a historical NHL esports league for the Finnish audience together with Liiga - the Finnish ice hockey elite league. The league included all fifteen Liiga organzations, represented by two gamers each in a tournament consisting of a 28-game regular season followed by best-of-three playoffs and a best-of-five final series. 

With a prize pool of 10 000€ on the line, all teams surely looked to give their all and over the course of the season, everyone got their fifteen seconds of fame as all teams were featured in live broadcasts from the Telia Esports studio. 

Here's a list of all eLiiga players for the inaugural season:

HIFK: Niklas @NikkeDangles Tukiainen, Perttu @Beniittto Kemppainen
HPK: Perttu @Regulinho Salo, Jim @SadaPoika Leskinen
Ilves: Aaro @xDoumi Ruuhinen, Tomi @tombo_02 Laitinen
Jukurit: Tuukka @FlyerKungen Kuha, Hannes @Hansulinho Kettunen
JYP: Antti @tbnantti Kuittinen, Oskari @sibeelius Grönroos
KalPa: Saku @Mehukatti10 Serttilä, Roni @MrNipsuli Kaján
Kärpät: Paul @PleeMaker Arontie, Kristian @kriketski17 Veijola
KooKoo: Nico @zNico Tuoreniemi, Janne @Nieppii Niemelä
Lukko: Juuso @Kemppane_ Kemppainen, Tuomas @Tumpp1A Aaltonen
Pelicans: Niklas "Koivisto81" Koivisto, Niklas "TheNikez37" Karlsson
SaiPa: Kristian @Krisutus Räsänen, Joona @Hullued Saarinen
Sport: Eemil @Sokkelo__ Soikkeli, Jani @layout Laakkonen
Tappara: Erik @Eki Tammenpää, Arttu @Artuzio Mustila
TPS: Valtteri @Vattu__ Virtanen, Väinö @Pikkardz Pikkarainen
Ässät: Teemu @Xteemuz Polttila, Tapani @Tappu Anttila

The past weekend featured the semifinals on Saturday, whereafter Sunday was the day for our bronze matchup and the grand finals. Eventually the top 4 teams that came to play this weekend were Tappara, Jukurit, KalPa and Kärpät and Sunday's matches featured the 3rd seed KalPa versus 7th seed Kärpät in the bronze matchup whereas 1st seed Tappara went up against 5th seed Jukurit in the grand final for the historical inaugural season championship title.

The excitement over the weekend was unreal and especially Sunday's decisive games were something else. Having the dynamic of two players representing each team made for some interesting strategic choices, but the eventual final series between Tappara and Jukurit extending to a full five games ensured that each representative got to face each other. The #1 seed Tappara represented by @Artuzio and @Eki naturally held all the pressure as expectations were high from the beginning, whereas the Jukurit duo was extremely strong but paved their way to the finals as somewhat of a surprise and had the luxury of coming in as slight underdogs. 

Results of the final games
Tappara - Jukurit
Game 1: 11-6 (Eki - Hansulinho)
Game 2: 6-8 (Artuzio - FlyerKungen)
Game 3: 4-3 (Eki - FlyerKungen)
Game 4: 4-5 OT (Artuzio - Hansulinho)
Game 5: 7-3 (Eki - FlyerKungen)

At the end of a full five game series, Tappara's @Artuzio and @Eki hoisted the first ever eLiiga trophy. Congrats guys!

All eLiiga players and fans are surely pleased to hear that Niklas Segercrantz from the Telia Esports team has stated to Jatkoaika.com, that the team is satisfied with the success that the series has seen and that there are plans on developing the product even further in the future.