HC 19 Humenné

The Slovak 1. Liga title of 2023 came down to a final against Vlci Žilina that HC 19 Humenné won 4:3, and days later the same opponent fell again, 2:1 after overtime, in the final of the Slovak Cup.

Humenné's hockey history did not begin in 2019 so much as resume. MHK Humenné had carried the city's teams since 1936 before folding in 2018, and HC 19 Humenné registered with the Slovak Ice Hockey Federation the following year to pick the tradition back up. The lion on the badge points further back still, to the coat of arms Humenné carried under the Drugeth family in the 14th and 15th centuries; the club only unveiled its lion mascot in 2023, once promotion to the Extraliga had given it a top-flight stage to wear it on.

That promotion proved hard to hold. A 12th-place finish sent the Lions back down to the 1. Liga in 2024. Some of that squad has carried KHL pedigree into Humenné's dressing room: Maxim Kondratiev arrived with a Gagarin Cup winner's medal from Ufa, and Michail Anisin had topped the KHL's scoring charts in 2011/12.

Home games are played in front of 3,150 seats at capacity, and the fiercest of them fall against HK Steel Team Trebišov, whose meetings with Humenné are known locally as the Zemplín derby. Off the ice, the club has leaned on building its own pipeline, working to move players up from the city's youth ranks rather than relying solely on imports. Relegated but not dismantled, HC 19 Humenné now goes back into the 1. Liga chasing the same route to the top division it found once before.