The Stockholm side will welcome the team from Austria's capital tonight (21:00 CEST) in what is a first European Quarter-Final for them since the inaugural European Cup campaign in 1955/56, and the occasion was not lost on the Finnish coach, speaking in the pre-match press conference.
"Yes, it's a quite historical game for us, a big opportunity and then a good opponent facing us. Rapid I think is a high-quality team in many ways, so we have to put our best effort to get a result tomorrow and of course understanding that there's two legs so the result is really important."
Honkavaara called for a good performance, but knows his side will have to do that when not at full strength, "We have a couple of players who are now injured and a couple of players who are suspended, so it's been a nice 'journey' picking the best XI who is going to play tomorrow, but then, we are ready."
Tokmac Nguen has three goals in the UECL campaign, but he will be serving a yellow-card suspension, as will Daniel Stensson, while Rasmus Schuller was forced off injured in the side's 1-0 win over Sirius in the Allsvenskan last weekend, joining the likes of Malkolm Nilsson and Patric Aslund on the treatment table.
Despite the absences, Honkavaara has belief in the players left available, "I think we've been preparing for this the whole preseason. We want to use all the players we have, we are satisfied with the players we have and this opens up a bit more opportunity for other players to show up.
"We trust the players we have, and we do the best with players we have in use and focus on those players, not the players who are out. We support them in the best way we can and we are going to have a good first XI out on the pitch."
With eight wins from their last 11 UECL fixtures, the Iron Stoves have every reason to believe tonight's match at the 3Arena will be another productive one on their European venture, even if they may have to rely heavily on their starters to go to Vienna in the lead.
"It's going to be interesting to deal with the substitutions. It might be so that if everything goes perfect, the starting XI will play the full 90 minutes and we don't do any substitutions," said Honkavaara.
"There might be some players who have to adjust to the situation that we have in hand, so it's difficult to predict beforehand what is going to happen in the game, and what the substitutions are going to be.
"We have a couple of quite multifunctional players on the bench who we can use in several positions, but it's going to be reactive from the bench to the situation we have in hand."