Tappara U20

Every U20 SM-sarja season now starts with an expectation Tappara's junior side has earned the hard way: fourteen national junior titles, the last one in 2023. The team draws on Tappara's own history and, before that, on Tammerfors Bollklubb, whose three championships from the early 1950s the club counts as its own.

Home games are played at Hakametsä 2, a compact 1,000-seat rink that stands in the shadow of the Nokia Arena, where the senior team plays. It is a modest stage for a programme that has produced players such as Janne Ojanen and Timo Jutila. Juha Metsola and Kristian Kuusela came through the same system.

Blue, orange and white mark out Tappi, as the team is known around Tampere, on a roster that in recent seasons has carried forward names like Oliver Suvanto and Juho Piiparinen.

None of it matters more, on the ice, than the Tampere derby.