Hämeenlinna

Two clubs once split the games between them in this Häme region town. Hämeenlinnan Pallokerho, already active since 1929, agreed a partial merger in 1935 with the older Hämeenlinnan Tarmo, founded in 1903: HPK took over bandy and baseball, Tarmo kept football, and ice hockey stayed under Tarmo's own roof for another four decades. Only in 1975 did that department pass fully into HPK's hands, a lineage the club still claims as part of its own history.

Locally the team is known simply as HPK, and occasionally by the English tag Hockey Playing Knights, a nod to the helmeted knight on its crest. The knights waited until 2005–06 for their first league title, beating Ässät Pori 3–1 in the final, then took a second in 2018–19 against Kärpät Oulu after a seven-game series that went the distance. Jari Kurri, whose number 31 hangs retired at the arena, remains the name most associated with the club abroad, alongside a run of goaltenders — Jukka Tammi and Jarmo Myllys among them — whose own numbers were taken out of circulation too.

Home games are played at the Pohjantähti Areena, seating 5,360, built on a site that started out in 1963 as an open-air artificial rink before the city took over the land and put up the current hall.

Across the region, no derby carries more weight than the one against Tappara of Tampere, the fixture both sides circle on the calendar even without a name of its own attached to it.