Vålerenga

Espen Knutsen left Jordal Amfi for the NHL in 1996 and never really left the club's story. Mats Zuccarello followed the same road out of Oslo decades later.

The section itself dates to 1947, formed inside a sports club that already went back to 1913. It has spent that time turning into the most decorated ice hockey side in Norway: 26 national championships between 1960 and 2009, with the 1960s alone accounting for ten of them, and 30 regular-season titles on top.

Arne Billkvam scored 491 points in a Vålerenga shirt, the most anyone has managed for the club; Jon Magne Karlstad played 548 matches, more than anyone else. During the 1994 NHL lockout the team briefly had Markus Näslund and Peter Forsberg in its lineup, a detail still repeated by anyone old enough to have been at Jordal Amfi that season.

The old arena came down and Nye Jordal Amfi opened on the same site in 2020, seating 5,300.

What it has needed, for the better part of the last three decades, is Storhamar. The two have met often enough in finals that their games carry their own weight regardless of league position.