Ketterä lost 2:5 to KeuPa in the Mestis on Thursday evening. The visitors took control early and never looked back, leaving the hosts to pick up the pieces after what was supposed to be a chance to climb away from the bottom of the table.
and here's the thing — you'd expect a team that just beat KeuPa 3:2 at home to feel confident, but confidence doesn't always survive a trip across the league. Ketterä had won two of their last six, including that narrow victory over these same opponents, but KeuPa came with a different hunger. They'd been hammered 7-1 by Pyry Nokian a fortnight ago and lost again to TUTTO, yet they showed up with something to prove.
The away side didn't wait for permission. They pressed higher, stayed compact when Ketterä tried to build, and took their chances when they came. The hosts had moments — they always do at home — but KeuPa were sharper in the finishing. to be fair, Ketterä's defence wasn't at fault for everything; the visitors simply made the right decisions at the right time.
Both sides sit on zero points after six games, which tells you this league is still wide open. Ketterä's recent record shows they can score — four against Kiekko-Pojat Jyväskylä, three against TUTTO, three against KeuPa — but they've also conceded heavily. Six losses in six matches is a pattern, and patterns don't change overnight.
KeuPa have one win from six, that 7-3 thumping of Kiekko-Pojat Jyväskylä, but they've also shown they can compete against teams above them. by then, when they'd lost to Pyry and TUTTO, you might have written them off. Instead, they came to Ketterä and showed why you shouldn't.
We'd backed the hosts at 68 per cent confidence. and here's the thing — the odds were reasonable on paper, but paper doesn't account for momentum. KeuPa had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Ketterä were trying to build something when they should have been surviving.
