The Aces may cause the biggest surprise of the opening round of the League.
Markus Phillips is the new Canadian reinforcement of the spade jerseys. PDO
The most interesting game of the day
In advance, the underdogs will be in bigger roles than expected in the opening round of the League. There are several matches on offer, where the power relations of the teams are not necessarily as clearly in the direction of the favorites as the general public or, for example, Veikkaus predicts in their odds. As the most potential “bomb”, I raise Ässie’s success against Ilves.
Personally, just looking at the roster, I was strongly in favor of Ilves before the start of the league. In the CHL, I’ve tried to match Ilves’ playing strength by evaluating the level of their opponents. The difficulties against Fribourg were still partly due to the opponent’s strength, but at the latest the previous home match against weak Salzburg (1-2 loss with the tough guys) revealed that Ilves’ game is still surprisingly incomplete at this stage of the season. Especially the defenders’ opening play from their own end got boring immediately if the opponent applied pressure. Passes almost did not find fast attackers at all, and the puck was not successfully brought up by anyone other than the KHL player who joined the team this season Jyrki from Jokipaka. This led to Ilves’ familiar pace game becoming exhausted and fading away almost completely. The team’s physical strength, on the other hand, was not enough for long and slow attacks. Playing in the same way, Ilves will be in surprisingly big trouble in the League, at least from the beginning of the season.
In the dominance game, Ilves constantly searched for the same pattern on the arc of the B-point in a small corner for a free player. In addition to the fact that the pattern itself is quite difficult, if it is constantly repeated it is easy for the opponent to read it off. With a small sample, Ilves’ superiority game looked really unimaginative and locked – and ineffective. The team’s coaching has certainly paid attention to the same thing and improvement is coming, but the different thing is whether the team still has time to change the practices for this game. I see Karri Kiven by coaching, the team has a good chance of eliminating Ilves’ superiority as well.
The Aces come into this season with the spirit of revenge, fueled by last season’s jumbo position and bad performances. In terms of material, the people of Pori have strengthened – of course, depending on how the foreign reinforcements fit their roles – and now the coach Karri Kive, whom I still appreciate, has had the whole summer to push his game ideas into the team. Aces, like many other teams predicted for the tail end of the League, may surprise you with their competitiveness. Of the training season matches, Ässät lost only one out of nine in regular time. With this information, there is no way I can place Ilves as the 1.61-level big favorite here.
In terms of betting, Ilves’ game inaction has already been tried a couple of times in the CHL as wishful thinking. If and when Red Bull Salzburg was able to pressurize Ilves’ opening game, why wouldn’t Karri Kiven Ässät be able to do the same. Although of course there is still the possibility that the Ilves’ failure in the CHL was only due to a lack of attitude, with the odds offered, the Aces’ stretch is palatable for bets in all win and draw categories. As the best bet, I raise Ässät +1.5 with the highest 1.70 coefficient on the market.
Ilves–Ässät starts at 18:30.
The best betting tip of the day
Another possible Liiga underdog search is KooKoo’s 3.05-fold direct away win over Jukurei. The final strength of the teams will be revealed over the course of the season, but basically I don’t consider Jukurei a stronger team than KooKoo. Both of them have had a lot of turnover in the players since last season, so the coaching issues have a strong influence on the early season’s selections. Jukurei has a small advantage here because it already has real competitive games from this fall through the CHL. Still, I can’t get the Mikkelians as marginal favorites here. Clearly, a direct 60-minute win would have been preferable to playing the actual game time “bet back in a draw” bet, but for some reason, Veikkaus still hasn’t gotten that quite popular game format into its own palette.
Also, the home team Sport, set as the underdog in the match in Vaasa, has a thin taste against JYP with its 2.52 coefficient. Likewise, SaiPa KalPa as a guest with its 3.75 coefficient. Because of the rather high analysis risk, and due to the underdog nature of the game targets, the stakes should be kept quite moderate. All league matches start at 18:30.
Games of the day:-
Total balance of the day’s games for the year: 40/68/109%
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