Kyiv Capitals

Twice the road ended in the same place. In April 2025 the Kyiv Capitals stood in the final of the Ukrainian Hockey Championship for the second season running, and for the second time HC Kremenchuk was waiting on the other side, exactly as it had been the year before, in the club's debut campaign of 2023–24.

There had barely been time to build a history before that run started. Kyiv Capitals came together in 2023, in the weeks after the 2023 IIHF World Championship Division IIB, when Vadim Shakhraichuk, one of the people behind the idea, took over as the first head coach. The club was tied from the outset to the Kryzhynka hockey school, whose director, Igor Arkhipenko, ran the bench through that first season and fed the roster from Kryzhynka-Capitals Kyiv, the club's own side in the Ukrainian Youth Hockey League.

On the ice, the numbers settled quickly around a handful of names. Serhiy Chernenko, a Ukraine international long before the Capitals existed, wore the captaincy and set the early pace in assists and points. Yaroslav Panchenko took the scoring lead in that first season with 45 points and has kept it since, ahead of Andrii Kryvonozhkin, who has outlasted both of them on appearances, past 90 games and 58 goals.

Two runners-up finishes have not settled anything with the club across town. Capitals and HC Sokil Kyiv meet as a derby.

The Capitals play in sky blue and navy, at the Palace of Sports in Kyiv, in front of a capacity of 7,000.