SaiPa

Lappeenranta sits on the shore of Lake Saimaa, close enough to the Russian border that the town has long framed itself as Finland's eastern gate, and SaiPa carries that identity into a league where bigger cities usually set the terms. The name comes from Saimaan Pallo, and the club started out covering bandy and football before ice hockey became its own department in 1951, after someone brought back a Canadian coaching handbook and the sport took hold. Locals still call the team "Miracle of the East," a nickname earned less by silverware than by staying power: for decades SaiPa shuttled between the top flight and the second tier, dropping out of Liiga and fighting back in more times than the club would probably like counted.

That pattern only broke in 2024–25, when SaiPa reached a Liiga final for the first time and finished as runners-up after losing 4–2 to KalPa. Raimo Helminen, who had played for the club before returning to coach it, was on the bench for that run — a piece of continuity in a town where the team's history and his own had already crossed once. The following season brought a bronze medal, giving SaiPa back-to-back podium finishes after a first SM-sarja bronze all the way back in 1966.

Player development has done more for the club's name outside Finland than any trophy: seven SaiPa graduates went on to the NHL, among them Niklas Bäckström, who won the Stanley Cup with Chicago in 2010, and Petri Skriko, the first Finn to play for the Vancouver Canucks. At home, matches against KooKoo of nearby Kouvola are billed as the Kaakon Derby, the region's own rivalry. SaiPa plays at Kisapuisto, which opened in 1972 on the site of an outdoor rink, and holds 4,820 spectators.