Krefeld Pinguine

Krefeld sits on the Rhine's industrial edge, and for most of its recent history the local ice hockey team has been the thing people argue about at work on a Monday. The Krefeld Pinguine trace back to a night in November 1936, when a team organised by Willi Münstermann and calling itself the "German Canadiens" played its first game in front of 8,000 spectators.

The club has worn four names since then. It began as Krefelder Eislaufverein, went bankrupt and became EHC Krefeld in 1978, reverted to KEV in 1981, and only took the Pinguine name in 1995, when the operation was restructured as a limited company.

Twice German champions before the DEL even existed, in 1951 and 1952, Krefeld had to wait half a century for the next one: the 2003 DEL title, won against Kölner Haie, a rival the club still meets in the Rhine Derby along with Düsseldorfer EG.

Christian Ehrhoff came through it from the age of six and went on to an NHL career and an Olympic silver medal; Tim Stützle followed a similar path out of Krefeld before Ottawa took him third overall in the NHL draft.

Home games are now played in front of a crowd that, at capacity, still runs to 8,029 .