The team from Pori threatens to fall out of the League playoffs.
The Aces are in danger of falling out of the playoffs. Elmeri Elo / All Over Press
The most interesting game of the day
On Thursday, the league offers two matches that are critical for the playoff spots. In Turku, there is a real struggle for six points when the ninth TPS in the table meets the eleventh KooKoo in the series, which has collected two points less. In Pori, on the other hand, Ässi has a psychologically challenging task, when nothing but victory is expected against HPK, which is on a losing streak of 12 matches.
Aces’ starting point for the match is not made easier by the fact that on Tuesday they lost the corresponding game by losing at home to league jumbo SaiPa after winning shots 2-3. Today, Ässi has an absolute must-win position. In the league table, Ässät is between TPS and KooKoo in the last playoff season. Today, HPK has been assigned the role of a bully and an opportunity to break its own sad losing streak against a pressure team.
The meetings between Ässi and HPK earlier in the season have been downright super low-goal events. HPK has beaten Ässä at home 3–0 and 3–1, and in Pori in September, Ässä won 1–0. It has been noteworthy in the matches that Ässät has been clearly the more dominant (and less effective) side in every game. For Äss, the combined shots of the mutual encounters are no less than 168–89 and the expected goal is 8.9–4.5. Even today, HPK’s Sami Rajaniemi (90.8% / 2.61), who starts in goal, has practically robbed the Aces every time.
The nature of the game is very likely to be low-goal even now, as HPK’s lineup in particular lacks a huge amount of decisive power compared to the optimum at the beginning of the season. 9 of the 19 best scorers are missing. Ässi also lacks Martin Lefebvre, Jesse Joensuu, by Jonathan Davidsson and Jami Virtanen in absence. Ässie’s absolute strength can also be found today in the form of Niklas Rubin (91.8% / 2.05). HPK’s weak composition turns the balance of power in the match even more strongly in the direction of Ässie than in previous encounters. My estimate of the winning probabilities in the actual game time is 66%–17%–17%.
Ässät–HPK starts at 18:30.
The best betting tip of the day
In terms of betting, you can get surprisingly large under odds for the Ässät–HPK match, taking into account the goalscoring and formation problems of both teams. When both ends also have the elite goalkeepers of the League, for example the 1.68 offered for the final score under 5.0 goals is even close to playable.
Games of the day:-
Total balance of the day’s games for the year: 22/47/82%
Every day Iltalehti chooses the most interesting game of the day and the best game destination of the day. You can always find them in the Betting and Ravit section.