Naisten Liiga (ice hockey)
Naisten Liiga ('Women's League'), also called the Naisten SM-liiga (NSML) and Jääkiekon naisten SM-liiga ('Ice Hockey Women's Finnish Championship League'), is the elite league for women's ice hockey in Finland. Until 2017, it was called the Naisten SM-sarja ('Women's Finnish Championship Series'). The league has 12 total teams between two divisions and is organized by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association. Kiekko-Espoo (previously "Espoo Blues" and "Espoo United") has dominated Naisten Liiga in the 21st century, winning sixteen Finnish Championships during the span of 1999 to 2022. Tampereen Ilves  Naiset is the second most successful club, with 10 championship titles, and are the only organization to have iced a team in every season since the league's inception. A majority of teams in Naisten Liiga 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. 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. Teams. Past participants. 2000s. Sources: Format. Season format. The season format of the Naisten Liiga has changed many times over the league's history. The format described here was introduced for the 2019–20 season. Preliminaries The preliminaries () are played as a double round-robin plus a two-game Opening Weekend Tournament; each of the ten teams plays a total of twenty matches. Points are awarded by match outcome: three points for a regulation win, two points for an overtime win, one point  for an overtime loss, and no points/zero points for a regulation loss. The points earned in the opening series determine which division a team will be sorted for the continuation of the season. Regular season The regular season, also called the upper division series (), is played by the top six teams from the preliminaries. Like the preliminaries, the series is played as a double round-robin, with each team playing a total of ten games. All six teams in the regular season are guaranteed placement in the playoffs; the cumulative points earned in the thirty games of the preliminaries  and regular season are used to establish the teams' playoff berths, from first to sixth. Only points scored in the upper division series are considered when determining the players who will receive the Marianne Ihalainen Award, for most regular season points earned, and the Tiia Reima Award, for most regular season goals scored; players in the lower division series ineligible for the awards. Lower division series The bottom four teams from the preliminary series move on to the lower division series (), where they are joined by the top two teams from the cross-qualifiers () of the Naisten Mestis, the league  directly below Naisten Liiga. The lower division series teams compete for the seventh and eighth seed positions in the playoffs; only the top two ranked teams from the lower division earn placement in the playoffs. Unlike the regular season, all lower division teams start the divisional series with zero points, only points earned in the series are considered when the teams are ranked. Qualifiers The lower division teams ranked third through sixth continue on to the qualifiers (). The points earned in the six qualifying series games are added to the points totals from the lower division series. The two teams  with the highest point totals qualify for the following Naisten Liiga season, the two lower ranked teams are relegated to or remain in the Naisten Mestis for the following season. Game format. 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. Champions. All-time medal count. – team participating in 2022–23 Naisten Liiga season Notes: Sources: Women's Finnish Champions by season. Notes: Sources: League records. All-time records of the Naisten SM-sarja and Naisten Liiga combined, from  1982–83 through the conclusion of the 2021–22 season. Single-playoff records All-time scoring leaders. The top-ten point-scorers in Naisten SM-sarja/Naisten Liiga history. Statistics valid through conclusion of 2021–22 season.