The big movers on the night were Kiekko-Espoo, who began in eighth place but now find themselves in fourth thanks to an entertaining 7-5 win away at Ilves.
Ilves had found some form of late, with back-to-back wins over the weekend, and they looked set to extend that run by racing into a 2-0 lead, courtesy of strikes from Samuli Ratinen and Erik Borg.
However, Kasper Kulonummi got the visitors on the board in the final minute of the opening period, before Janne Hamalainen levelled things up six minutes into the second.
But the Tampere side would not be rolled over, and a pair of Matic Torok goals either side of Arttu Tuomaala adding another for Kiekko made the score 4-3 to the home side after 40 minutes.
In the eighth minute of the final period, Simon Johansson extended the Ilves lead further, but from then on, the Espoo side dominated - Peter Quenneville halved the deficit with nine minutes to play before Iikka Kangasniemi tied things up at 5-5.
With 14:13 on the period three clock, Kiekko-Espoo went ahead for the first time as Quenneville scored his second, then Cameron Hillis settled matters with an empty-netter late on. It's a fourth win in five for the Espoo team, while Ilves hold onto their 12th place in the standings.
KalPa were 1-0 down after 40 minutes against Jukurit, but an incredible final period with two goals each for Jaakko Rissanen and Konsta Kapanen - plus one for Teemu Hartikainen - saw them win 5-3, picking up a third victory on the bounce and stay in third place, as the visitors slipped to seventh.
The champions are three points shy of second-placed JYP, who had a much more comfortable evening, scoring four times in the first two periods and cruising to a 4-1 win over IFK Helsinki, who stay bottom following a fifth-straight loss. For JYP, it's five wins in a row.
Joel Maatta scored the only goal early in the second period as TPS Turku beat Hameenlinna 1-0 at home to move up to ninth, as the visitors stay 11th following a third successive loss, as they failed to beat Noa Vali, who made 24 saves for TPS.
Assat's lead has been cut following tonight's results, but it is still a healthy margin of four points as they won 4-2 away at Karpat on Tuesday. Tappara have dropped back to fifth tonight, but they did their top-four hopes no harm yesterday with a 5-0 thrashing of SaiPa.
Follow Flashscore for all the Liiga results, stats and fixtures.