Huttwil

Campus Perspektiven seats 3,500 and sits at the centre of a town of a few thousand people, built for a club that had to be rebuilt from scratch before it could move in. Hockey Huttwil only took up residence there in 2018, when the first team of EHC Brandis packed up from Hasle-Rüegsau and settled in Huttwil, giving the town a senior side to call its own after years without one.

The name on the arena is newer than the hockey it houses. The line runs back to 1985, when SC Hasle-Rüegsau and EHC Lützelflüh merged into EHC Brandis. Huttwil's own club went a different way in the meantime: it joined Wasen-Sumiswald and Rohrbach to become EHC Napf in 1996, was rebranded Huttwil Falcons in 2009, and folded in 2011 after the Falcons were refused promotion to the NLB. The 2018 move brought the Brandis lineage back to a town that had already lost its team once.

Since then the club has played in the MySports League, finishing runners-up in 2017-18 and again in 2021-22, brief spells at the top of a division that has otherwise kept them a step below the promotion places. Michael Lüdi topped the scoring charts in the 2023-24 season, part of a squad built under head coach Daniel Bieri.

What still gives the fixtures their edge is the trip to SCL Langenthal, a derby that draws on decades of Emmental hockey rivalry rather than anything settled in the standings. On those nights Campus Perspektiven, black, red and white end to end, is as full as a rink built for 3,500 in a small Bernese town can get.