Bars

Turn up for Bars against Toros Neftekamsk and it can be hard to tell the sides apart: both teams take the ice in shades of green so close that the fixture has earned its own name on the Russian junior and second-tier hockey circuit, the Green Derby.

The club started out in 2009 as Ak Bars-2. It topped the Kharlamov Division in the regular season twice, in 2011/12 and again in 2013/14. The same year brought the step up: Bars, as the team was now called, moved into the Higher Hockey League, where it has stayed since, still working as Kazan's nursery for the senior club rather than chasing silverware of its own.

Artyom Anisimov, once a fixture on NHL rosters, took the bench for a season in 2022/23 before handing the job on; Alexander Stepanov has run the team through 2024/25. Behind them sits Tatneft, the oil company whose name is on the arena as well as the shirt, with Nail Maganov as club president.

Home games are played at the Small Ice Palace inside the Tatneft Arena complex, in front of crowds that rarely test its 8,700 seats, and rivalry still runs closest to home: Neftekhimik of Nizhnekamsk for the Tatarstan derby, and Almetyevsk's Neftyanik, another club whose players are also, in the end, on loan from Ak Bars.