Auroraliiga


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 in 1982, it was known as the Naisten Liiga from 2017 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 seventeen Finnish Championships from 1999 to 2025. Tampereen Ilves is the second most successful club in the league's 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, 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.
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Format

Season

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 Naisten [Liiga season|2022–23 season]. 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. 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.
;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 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 against the top team of the Naisten Mestis regular season. The winner of the series qualifies for the following Auroraliiga season and the loser is relegated to 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.

Teams

2025–26 season

TeamLocationHome venueHead coachCaptain
HIFKPirkkolan jäähalli
HPK HämeenlinnaJääliikuntakeskus Hakio
Ilves TampereTesoman jäähalli
KalPa KuopioNiiralan Monttu
Kiekko-Espoo EspooTapiolan harjoitusareena
Kärpät OuluRaksilan jäähalli
RoKi20px RovaniemiLappi Areena
Team Kuortane KuortaneKuortaneen jäähalli
TPS TurkuKupittaan jäähalli

Past participants

1980s

  • Ässät, 1982–1995
  • EVU, 1982–1990
  • Haukat, 1982–83
  • HJK, 1982–1986
  • Jäähonka, 1982–1984
  • SaiPa, 1982–1992
  • Shakers, 1982–1985 & 1986–1996
  • Tiikerit, 1982–1984, 1987–88 & 1989–90
  • Kiekko-Vesa, 1983–1985
  • Teräs-Kiekko, 1983–1985
  • Ilves-Kiekko, 1984–1987 & 1988–1990
  • Ketterä, 1984–85 & 1991–1993
  • StU, 1984–85

1990s

  • Karhut
  • Tappara, 1993–94 & 1997–2008
  • JyP HT
  • IHK, 1998–2009
  • K-Kissat, 1999–2002

2000s

Sources:

Champions

All-time medal count

– team is participating in the 2025–26 Auroraliiga season
Team
Kiekko-Espoo1648
Ilves Tampere10126
Kärpät Oulu378
Shakers Kerava341
JYP Jyväskylä340
IFK Helsingfors 213
Helsingin Jääkiekkoklubi 211
Etelä-Vantaan Urheilijat 151
Hämeenlinnan Pallokerho 114
Kalevan Pallo 014
Itä-Helsingin Kiekko 011
Saimaan Pallo 001
Team Kuortane001
Sport Vaasa001

Notes:
Sources:

Finnish Champions by season

Notes:
Sources:

League records

All-time records of the Auroraliiga, from the 1982–83 season through the conclusion of the 2024–25 regular season.

Single-season records

Players appearing in ten or fewer games during a single season are not included.

Single-playoff records

Players appearing in three or fewer games during a single playoff are not included.

Career records

Players appearing in fewer than thirty regular season games during their Auroraliiga career are not included.

Career playoff records

Players appearing in ten or fewer Naisten Liiga playoff games during their career are not included.

All-time scoring leaders

The top-ten regular season point-scorers in Auroraliiga history through the conclusion of 2024–25 season, inclusive of seasons during which the league was known as the Naisten SM-sarja and Naisten Liiga.
NatPlayerPosGPGAPtsPIMS
sortname|Riikka|Noronen