The 2025 Aurora Borealis Cup playoffs or the 2025 Auroraliiga playoffs () is the playoff tournament for the 2024–25 season of the

Auroraliiga The is the national premier league for women's ice hockey in Finland. Founded by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association as the Naisten Suomen mestaruus, SM-sarja (NSMs; ) in 1982, it was known as the Naisten Liiga (NSML;) from 2017 until being rebr ...

. The tournament began on 22 February and the

Aurora Borealis Cup The Aurora Borealis Cup () is the trophy awarded by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association to the victorious team of the Auroraliiga playoffs, the Finnish Champion in women's ice hockey. Project Christopher Shapardanov, Canadian Ambassador to Fin ...

was awarded to

Kiekko-Espoo Kiekko-Espoo is a Finnish professional ice hockey club founded in 2018 as a continuation of the Kiekko-Espoo team originally founded in 1984. Kiekko-Espoo men's team plays in the Liiga, where they were promoted for the 2024–25 Liiga season, 20 ...

on 29 March. IFK Helsinki, winners of the 2024 Naisten Liiga playoffs, were the defending Aurora Borealis Cup champions until being eliminated in the 2025 quarterfinals. Entering the playoffs, Kiekko-Espoo were the favorites for the 2025 Aurora Borealis Cup.

Season reviews

Kiekko-Espoo

Finishing thirteen points ahead of the competition, Kiekko-Espoo claimed the regular season title for the second consecutive season. Three of the season's top-five scorers were Kiekko-Espoo players, including the overall league points leader, Emma Nuutinen (27 goals+38 assists=65

points A point is a small dot or the sharp tip of something. Point or points may refer to: Mathematics * Point (geometry), an entity that has a location in space or on a plane, but has no extent; more generally, an element of some abstract topologica ...

); the league's top goal scorer, Lisette Täks (30+25); and the league's top-scoring

defenseman Defence or defense (in American English) in ice hockey is a player position that is primarily responsible for preventing the opposing team from Goal (ice hockey), scoring. They are often referred to as defencemen, D, D-men or blueliners (the l ...

, Minttu Tuominen (14+35).

HPK

HPK ended the regular season ranked second in the league – the team's best finish since the 2010–11 season in which they won the Aurora Borealis Cup.

Team Kuortane

Team Kuortane achieved the best regular season finish in team history after overtaking HIFK and clinching the third seed on the last day of the regular season. The team was buoyed by aggressive offense, one of the league's strongest blue lines, and goaltending that displayed flashes of brilliance.

HIFK

Defending Aurora Borealis Cup champions IFK Helsinki saw an unusually high number of players leave the team following the 2024 Finnish Championship, with nine significant players not returning for the 2024–25 season. Departures ahead of the 2024–25 season included Michaela Pejzlová, Sanni Vanhanen, Julia Liikala, and

Clara Rozier Clara Rozier (born 28 August 1997) is a French ice hockey player and member of the French national ice hockey team. She is signed in the Swiss Women's League (SWHL A) with the women's team of SC Bern for the 2024–25 season. Playing career ...

, four of the top-five point scorers in the league during the previous season;

Kiia Lahtinen Kiia may refer to: * Kinomichi Instructors International Association, KIIA * Kiia, Estonia, village in Estonia * Kiia (singer) Canadian singer {{disambig ...

, the league's 2023–24 best goaltender by save percentage;

Siiri Yrjölä Siiri Yrjölä (born 8 September 2004) is a Finnish college ice hockey player for St. Cloud State and a member of Finland women's national ice hockey team. She previously played for IFK Helsinki of the Naisten Liiga. Playing career Yrjölä ...

, the team's 2023–24 top-scoring defenseman; and team captain

Karoliina Rantamäki Karoliina Stina Margaretha Rantamäki (born 23 February 1978) is a Finnish ice hockey forward. She plays in the Auroraliiga with Kiekko-Espoo. Rantamäki holds the all-time career record for games played with the Finnish women's national ice ...

. HIFK's slide from second in the standings in 2023–24 to fourth in 2024–25 can be broadly attributed to the changes in roster composition. Notable off-season signings included forwards Emma Lappalainen and Iida Lappalainen from RoKi and goaltender

Tea Koljonen Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of ''Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of south-western China and northe ...

from Kiekko-Espoo, however, HIFK opted to fill most of the vacancies with young players from its own development system. The influx of youth players pushed the team's average age from 21 years, which had held steady across both of the previous seasons, to 19.7 years in 2024–25. Across the 32-game season, HIFK recorded twenty wins and nine losses in regulation time and an additional win and two losses in overtime for 64 totals points. They scored 113 goals on the season, a total of 62 fewer goals than in 2023–24. Twenty year old

center Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentrici ...

Pauliina Salonen narrowly led HIFK's scoring and placed ninth on the league scoring chart, with sixteen goals and eighteen assists for 34 points. Her linemates both notched 33 points, with Anni Pere (16 goals + 17 assists) ranking tenth in league scoring and Emmi Juusela (7+26) ranking thirteenth. Twelve players recorded ten or more points for HIFK on the season, with notable contributions from veteran forward Johanna Kemppainen (9+11=20) and the team's top-scoring defensemen, eighteen year old Heidi Holmberg (7+13=20) and newly appointed captain Athéna Locatelli (4+13=17). With the departure of Lahtinen, netminder Miia Vainio was promoted from backup to starter and the twenty year old struggled with the increased workload. She recorded a decent but unremarkable save percentage of 90.1 and similarly middling goals against average of 2.51 across 23 appearances, which respectively ranked eighth and seventh of all goaltenders playing at least one-third of their team's minutes. Eighteen year old backup Nelli Nieminen was the league's top netminder of those playing less than one-third of their team's minutes, achieving a solid 91.5 save percentage and respectable 1.67 goals against average across six outings.

Bracket

Quarterfinals

The best-of-five quarterfinals () began on Saturday, 22 February and concluded on Sunday, 2 March. The top eight teams from the regular season qualified for the quarterfinal round. Each series alternated venue on a per-game basis, with home ice advantage granted to the higher seeded team for the first, third, and potential fifth game. Due to the substantial distance between Kiekko-Espoo and Kärpät's homes, the teams were scheduled to play back-to-back games at each venue rather than alternating on a per-game basis. Kiekko-Espoo was be granted home ice advantage for the first, second, and potential fifth game. ''All times local,

Eastern European Time Eastern European Time (EET) is one of the names of UTC+02:00 time zone, 2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The zone uses daylight saving time, so that it uses UTC+03:00 during the summer. A number of African countries use UTC ...

(

UTC+2 UTC+02:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +02:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2020-11-08T23:41:45+02:00. As standard time (year-round) Principal cities: Pretoria, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Por ...

)''

(1) K-Espoo vs. (8) Kärpät

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(2) HPK vs. (7) TPS

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(3) Kuortane vs. (6) KalPa

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(4) HIFK vs. (5) Ilves

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Semifinals

The best-of-seven semifinals () began on Tuesday, 4 March and concluded on Wednesday, 12 March. ''All times local,

(

)''

K-Espoo vs Ilves

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HPK vs Kuortane

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Bronze medal game

The Finnish Championship bronze medal game () was played on Saturday, 22 March 2025. Ilves claimed the seventh Finnish Championship bronze medal in team history, in a 4–1 victory over Team Kuortane.

Finals

The best-of-seven Finnish Championship finals ( or ), also called the grand finale (), began on Tuesday, 18 March. The Aurora Borealis Cup will be awarded no later than Sunday, 30 March.
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Player statistics

Scoring leaders

The following players led the league in playoff points at the conclusion of games played on 22 March 2025.

Goaltenders

The following goaltenders had played at least sixty playoff minutes in net at the conclusion of the games played on 22 March 2025, sorted by

save percentage Save percentage (often known by such symbols as SV%, SVS%, SVP, PCT) is a statistic in various Goal (sports), goal-scoring sports that track Save (goaltender), saves as a statistic. In ice hockey and lacrosse and association football, it is a sta ...

References

Game references

External links

Official statistics
from the

Finnish Ice Hockey Association The Finnish Ice Hockey Association (, ) is the sport governing body, governing body of ice hockey in Finland. Since the late 1980s, Finland has enjoyed a period of success on the international stage and, , the Finland men's national ice hockey t ...

{{In lang, fi Naisten Liiga (ice hockey) playoffs