Did We Just See Quality Beat Quantity?

Falun lost to Nokian in the first of two quarterfinals in the Champions Cup, despite being the team winning the shot share by quite a big margain. But Nokian was the team that created the most high-danger scoring chances – which gave them a chance to win the game.

Speaking of quantity, by the way... It has been a big discussion point this pre-season, that the Champions Cup is played with a 3x15 minute format, with 12 players and 2 goalies.

It of course changes the game in a pretty big way, since there is almost a period less of game time with this format, and the rosters being thinner. And since you kind of take away the last period, the better team on paper might never get to that phase of the game where they finally find ways to make a difference against a team that is pushed towards the edge for a longer period of time.

Here are the numbers from the five-on-five part of the game. 👇

The numbers look to favour Falun pretty much, right?

True that, but Nokian won two categories, among them the most important one – the actual number of scored goals. They also out-chanced Falun in the high-danger scoring chance department, mostly through counter-attacking. So in this regard, Nokian actually beat Falun when it comes to creating quality looks. We will look at how it all happened further below.

But Falun dominated the shot share numbers, having two-and-a-half as many shot attempts (51-19) and almost double the amount of unblocked shots (31-16). And this put them in a position to earn a higher xG value than Nokian on aggregate.

It for sure looks like there is a quite a big chance, that Falun might be able to come away with a victory in the second leg in Finland next weekend, which would send the game to overtime because of the format in which the Champions Cup is played.

First and foremost, let us look at how Nokian go to their high-danger chances, and how Falun looks now after having changed coaches. Check out the video below. 👇