Viltahaus played host to HC Olmpiya in a club friendly on Thursday, losing 3:4 after what looked like a competitive contest between two sides finding their rhythm ahead of the new campaign. Olmpiya came away with the win, though neither result tells you much about where either team stands in the proper standings.
Viltahaus have been involved in some entertaining games lately, with four of their last five matches seeing combined scores of seven or more goals. Their defeat to Black Wings Linz 0:4 on Tuesday was an outlier in that pattern, but you wouldn't know it from watching this one against Olmpiya.
Olmpiya arrived with mixed recent form — a 3:2 win over Landshut on August 30th, then a series of results against Val-Pusteria that saw them win 5:4 and lose 0:3 on consecutive days in early April. And here's the thing: friendlies like this don't really sort out which version of either side is going to show up when it counts.
Four goals for Olmpiya against Viltahaus' three suggests an open game, though without period-by-period breakdowns it's hard to say when the match turned. By then, both teams had already committed to playing this way — attacking, leaving space, seeing what happens.
The result doesn't shift any tables because there aren't any meaningful tables yet for either club. Fourth place with zero games and zero points means the season has just started and the standings say nothing, so neither side can claim this changes their position.
What it does tell you is that Viltahaus' defensive concerns from those recent heavy defeats may not be resolved. Olmpiya found the net four times against a side that had conceded seven in each of their last two matches before Tuesday's shutout against Linz.