Kiekko-Pojat Joensuu

Joensuu sits on the Pielisjoki, and for a town of its size the local rivalry runs east: matches against SaPKo of Savonlinna are billed as the Itä-Suomen derby, and the club's own nickname, Jokipojat — River Boys — points straight back to the water the town grew up beside.

The club itself is a product of mergers more than one clean beginning. It came together in 1960 when Kiekko-Karhut, founded in 1953, joined forces with the ice hockey section of Joensuun Maila-Pojat. A 1994 bankruptcy sent the hockey operation back into Kiekko-Karhut's hands, which took the Jokipojat name in 1998; in 2020 a merger with Karjalan Kopla and new ownership brought the original name, Joensuun Kiekko-Pojat, back to the shirt.

Silverware has come mostly one tier below the top flight. The club won Mestis in 2009–10 after finishing runner-up there twice, in 2008–09 and 2011–12, and collected four I-Divisioona titles across the late 1980s and 1990s. Tapio Pohtinen kept goal for Kiekko-Pojat from 1966 to 1986, long enough that his number 1 hangs retired alongside those of Jarkko Immonen, who played more than 400 games in defence, and forward Hannu Kapanen.

Home games are played at PKS Areena, known locally as Mehtimäen jäähalli, which has held 4,800 spectators since 1982 and was renovated in 2023–2024. It is a modest ground for a club that has spent most of its existence one level short of Finland's elite, built from two teams that decided, in 1960, they would do better as one.