Khimik

Voskresensk is a chemical-industry town in Moscow Oblast, and for decades its identity beyond the factory floor has run through one rink. Khimik grew out of the town's works side in 1953, shaped by its founder and first coach, Nikolai Epshstein, into a club that could hold its own against sides from far larger cities.

The town came close to losing it altogether in 2005, when the original roster relocated to Mytishchi and turned into Atlant. What returned to Voskresensk kept the old name, the blue-and-yellow colours and the nickname Khimiki, playing out of the Khimik Ice Palace that now carries Epshstein's own name and seats just 3,229.

Few production-team academies of the Soviet era sent through players of the calibre Voskresensk did: Igor Larionov and Vyacheslav Kozlov both passed through here before their careers carried them into the NHL, alongside Valeri Kamensky and Andrei Markov. The club never took a Soviet championship outright, finishing runner-up in 1989 and collecting bronze on four occasions, but it won the RSFSR title in 1954, a year after its founding, and returned to silverware in the post-Soviet game with the Supreme League in 2008 and the VHL's Petrov Cup in 2023.

Its sharpest modern rivalry is with Zvezda Moscow, a fixture still called a Moscow derby even though Voskresensk itself sits well outside the capital.