Ilves and Kärpät meet in the league’s top fight.
Teemu Turunen craves power against Ilves. Jaakko Stenroos / AOP
The most interesting game of the day
There are two matches between really good teams in the league today.
In both the JYP–Sport and Ilves–Kärpät matches, the teams with winning streaks of three and four matches meet. In Tampere, it will be twisted with the stamp of a top match, when the second-placed Ilves meets the third-placed Kärpät, who have improved a lot since the beginning of the season.
In principle, Ilves’ winning streak of four matches should be valued more than Kärppie’s three winning streaks, because KooKoo, Tappara, HIFK and KalPa have fallen in the handling of the Tampere team.
The combined goals for Ilves from those four matches are 15–6, but the expected ones for the visitors are surprisingly 7.5–9.5. Especially in the 5–2 HIFK win, Ilves was both wildly efficient and lucky.
The Kärppie’s winning streak consists somewhat oddly of three HPK matches, two of which were played in Oulu. Kärpät took the combined goals of the HPK matches in crushing style 14–2 and the expected 10–7.
The improvement of the Kärppi’s game and the good results mainly come from the matches against the weaker teams in the series. Tonight’s match is a better measure of Kärppie’s current level.
The Ilves–Kärpät game adds its own extra spice to the fact that the people from Oulu have not yet managed to beat either team from Tampere at the top of the league this season.
At the beginning of October, Ilves claimed points from Oulu with a 6–3 victory, and Tappara did the same a couple of weeks ago with 1–4 goals.
In addition, Ilves now has the wins of the three previous meetings between them. Kärpät last defeated Ilves more than a year ago.
In the match, the stress factors are equal, because both had an away game yesterday. Sure, Ilves had to travel from Kuopio to Tampere in the evening, while Kärpät only traveled from Hämeenlinna today. However, I don’t count this as a bigger disadvantage for Ilves.
Both teams get into the game without line-up concerns. In terms of power relations, Ilves is a hair over 45% favorite in actual game time. In veda, the best taste is the low finish. The 1.89 offered for less than 5.0 goals is almost a borderline case with an estimate of 52%.
Ilves–Kärpät starts at 18:30.
The best betting tip of the day
The best betting idea for Thursday in the league is the Lukko–KooKoo match under 5.0 goals with a coefficient of 1.75.
KooKoo has little by little got its key players back on the field from illness and yesterday this was already visible in a really compact defensive play against Ässi.
From the beginning of the season, KooKoo has been generous, especially away from home, both in terms of goals and the number of goals. However, I believe that the direction of the team is currently on the way to fewer goals with the improvement of defensive play.
Lukko, on the other hand, has scored very few goals at home in recent matches. In Luko’s previous six home games, only an average of 3.67 goals have been scored per game. When even the expected average does not rise to the level of 3.9 goals per game, it is quite reasonable to expect a low-goal result for both teams on consecutive days. Lukko – KooKoo starts at 18:30.
The best search in the NHL is under 6.0 goals in regular time for the match Seattle–Nashville with a coefficient of 1.67. This starts at 4:07.
Games of the day: Lukko–KooKoo under 5.0 goals (odds 1.75).
The total balance of the day’s games for the year: 112/199/98%
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.