Wolves

Manuel Oberhofer knows the drop from the Intercable Arena stands as well as anyone.

That identity was built slowly. The club took three Serie B titles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then spent decades pushing to be taken seriously at the top level. The closest it has come to a first major trophy arrived only this year, in the ICEHL, where Bruneck again finished second.

Yellow and black have stayed the club's colours since 1954, a detail that matters more in Bruneck than it might elsewhere: this is a town where the team is one of the few things that puts it on a wider map, and the players know it walking into the Intercable Arena, 3,100 seats deep in the Puster Valley, with the crowd close enough to the glass to be heard on the bench.