The Auroraliiga is the national premier league for women's ice hockey in Finland. Founded by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association as the Naisten SM-sarja (NSMs; lit.'Women's Finnish Championship series') in 1982, it was known as the Naisten Liiga (NSML;lit.'Women's League') from 2017[2][3] until being rebranded as Auroraliiga in 2024. The league comprises approximately 225 players across nine teams.
Kiekko-Espoo has been the dominating force of the Auroraliiga in the 21st century, winning sixteen Finnish Championships from 1999 to 2022.[4]Tampereen Ilves is the second most successful club in league history, with ten championship titles. Ilves are the only organization to have iced a team in every season since the league's inception.
A majority of teams in Auroraliiga share their names with men's professional teams in the Liiga or Mestis – HIFK, HPK, Ilves, KalPa, Kiekko-Espoo, Kärpät, Lukko, RoKi, TPS – but the women's teams have historically received few resources and limited promotion from the affiliated men's clubs.[5] In recent years progress has been made in building better relationships between the men's and women's teams; most men's clubs now provide some support to their women's counterparts by advertising games together or helping secure sponsorships.[6][7]
Format
Season format
The Finnish Ice Hockey Association has altered the season format of the Auroraliiga several times over the league's history. The system currently in use was introduced for the 2022–23 season.[8] It added six games per team to the regular season schedule and matched the season structure of the league's closest neighbor, the Swedish Women's Hockey League (SDHL). The new format replaced the previous twenty-game preliminary series and ten-game divisional series structure, which was first introduced in the 2018–19 season and refined prior to the 2019–20 season.[9]
Regular season
The regular season is a quadruple round-robin tournament, in which each team plays every other team four times – typically, each team plays every other team twice at home and twice away – resulting in a 36-game season per team. Teams are ranked by points, with three points awarded for a win in regulation time, two points for an overtime win, one point for an overtime loss, and no points awarded for a regulation loss. Individual player statistics from the regular season determine the winner of the Marianne Ihalainen Award for most points, the Tiia Reima Award for most goals scored, and the Sari Fisk Award for best plus–minus.
The top eight teams at the end of the regular season qualify for the Auroraliiga playoffs.
Playoffs
The three rounds of the Auroraliiga playoffs (Finnish: Auroraliiga pudotuspelit) are played as best-of series, with the exception of the single-elimination game for the Finnish Championship bronze medal. In the best-of-five quarterfinals, teams are paired by seeding from the regular season, with the first seed facing the eighth seed, the second seed facing the seventh seed, and so on. The semifinals and finals are best-of-seven series.
The champions of the Auroraliiga playoffs receive the Aurora Borealis Cup as league champions and gold medals as Finnish Champions in women's ice hockey. Selected by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association, the MVP of the playoffs is awarded the Karoliina Rantamäki Trophy.
Qualification
The team finishing the season in ninth place plays a promotion/relegation series (Finnish: karsintasarja, lit. 'qualifying series') against the top team of the Naisten Mestis regular season.[8] The winner of the series qualifies for the following Auroraliiga season and the loser is relegated to (or remains in) the Naisten Mestis for the following season.
A regulation game is sixty minutes in length, played over three 20-minute periods. In the event of a tie at the end of regulation time the winner is decided by a five-minute-length, three-skaters-per-side overtime period.
If the game remains tied after the overtime period, the teams proceed to a shootout, in which each team designates three skaters to take penalty shots, one at a time, against the opposing goaltender. Teams alternate shots and each team takes one shot per round. The winner is the team with more goals after three rounds or the team that amasses an unreachable advantage before the third round. If the shootout is tied after three rounds, tie-breaker rounds are played one at a time until there is a winner.
^The 2019–20 Naisten Liiga post-season was cancelled by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association on 12 March 2020, citing public health concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The Aurora Borealis Cup Finnish Championship finals between Kiekko-Espoo and KalPa and the Finnish Championship bronze medal games between Team Kuortane and Kärpät were scheduled to begin on 14 March 2020. With the cancellation of the season, neither the Aurora Borealis Cup nor any Finnish Championship medals were awarded for the 2019–20 season.[15]
Most assists: Riikka Noronen, 447 assists (644 games; 1995–2022)
Most points: Riikka Noronen, 775 points (644 games; 1995–2022)
Most points, defenceman: Päivi Halonen, 495 points (408 games; 1982–2006)
Best points per game: Michelle Karvinen, 3.667 points per game (39 games; 2007–2009)
Most penalty minutes: Rosa Lindstedt, 483 PIM (314 games; 2002–2016)
Most games played, goaltender: Susanna Airaksinen, 224 games (2009–2022)
Best save percentage: Johanna Oksman, .931 SV% (100 games; 2012–2022)
Best goals against average: Kiia Lahtinen, 1.48 GAA (48 games; 2019–2024)
Most shutouts: Tiina Ranne, 34 shutouts (210 games; 2010–2024)
Career playoff records
Players appearing in ten or fewer Naisten Liiga playoff games during their career are not included.[21]
Most goals: Karoliina Rantamäki, 81 goals (117 games; 1992–2024)
Most assists: Linda Välimäki, 72 assists (93 games; 2005–2019)
Most points: Karoliina Rantamäki, 144 points (117 games; 1992–2024)
Most points, defenceman: Saija Tarkki, 89 points (145 games; 1997–2019)
Best points per game: Michelle Karvinen, 2.27 points per game (15 games; 2007–2009)
Most penalty minutes: Tea Villilä, 131 PIM (111 games; 2007–2024)
Best save percentage: Kassidy Sauvé, .939 SV% (12 games; 2021–2024)
Best goals against average: Kiia Lahtinen, 1.39 (13 games; 2020–2024)
Most shutouts: Tiia Pajarinen, 15 shutouts (55 games; 2015–2024)
All-time scoring leaders
The top-ten regular season point-scorers in Auroraliiga history, including seasons in which the league was known as the Naisten SM-sarja and Naisten Liiga, through the conclusion of 2023–24 season.[17][20]
^Salmela, Sari; Pelkonen, Johanna (2008). "SM-sarjan historiaa vuosilta 1982 - 2008" [History of the SM-sarja from 1982 to 2008]. leijonat.fi (in Finnish). Archived from the original on 6 September 2008. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
