Karlskrona

NKT Arena holds 5,050, a capacity that has stayed put through relegation, near-bankruptcy and promotion alike, and it is where Karlskrona HK have played since the club's formation in 2001, replacing Karlskrona IK after that side went bankrupt.

The rebuild started at the bottom, in Division 3, and took a decade to reach the second tier: promotion from Division 2 followed in 2007–08, then the Kvalserien in 2011–12 lifted the club into HockeyAllsvenskan. The breakthrough came in 2014–15, when a second-place league finish and a play-off win over Västerås IK sent Karlskrona into the Swedish Hockey League for the first time. Joel Kellman was central to that run, and he stayed through all three SHL seasons before moving on to Brynäs IF and eventually the San Jose Sharks. Relegation followed in 2017–18 after a 14th-place finish, and the club's finances then failed to keep pace with the ambition: in 2019–20 Karlskrona were denied an elite licence and dropped to HockeyEttan despite staying up on the ice. Bankruptcy loomed until a fan-and-alumni fundraising drive, backed by Kellman and by Jon Olsson, kept the club alive under restructuring.

The nickname Black Bugs comes from the stag beetle on the club crest, a name The Hockey News put into wider circulation in 2015 — the same year the team reached the SHL.