Sparta Prague

Sparta come into the season as one of the fixtures of the Czech Extraliga. The rivalry has outlasted the eras that reshaped the club itself — under communist rule it played as TJ Spartak Praha Sokolovo and later TJ Sparta ČKD Praha before the name HC Sparta Praha returned in 1990.

The championships tell two different stories. Four titles came under Czechoslovakia, the last in 1992–93, and four more after the split, the most recent in 2006–07. The Spengler Cup wins, back to back in 1962 and 1963, belong to an even earlier version of the club, whose numbers still hang retired inside the arena.

Sparta play at the O2 Arena, seating 17,383, having left the Tipsport Arena in Holešovice for it in 2015. It used one well in 2016–17, reaching the final of the Champions Hockey League. Since 2019 the Kaprain Group has owned the club, backing a side that spent decades before that shifting grounds and names with the politics around it.

None of that reaches back as far as the club's own start. Sparta began life in 1903 not on ice but as a bandy section of AC Sparta Praha, only turning to hockey six years later, in 1909.