Mechelen

The Golden Sharks arrived in the CEHL through the Belgian 2nd Division, a route they finished twice at the top before graduating; a fifth-place finish in the 2021-22 season still stands as their best return since joining what was then the BeNe League in 2018. The senior men's side has yet to reach a Belgian Championship or Cup, which leaves the club's most recent silverware sitting with the women's team.

None of it existed before September 2016. Mechelen's previous rink, Flanders on Ice, had closed, and Gunter Bosmans, co-owner of the new Ice Skating Centre Mechelen, put a club together to fill the ice he now had spare capacity in. It started out as Cold Play Sharks Mechelen. Two years later the senior men split off under the Mechelen Golden Sharks name so the youth academy and the women's side, the Lady Sharks, could keep the old one — a distinction that still holds; the Lady Sharks were the ones who lifted the 2026 Belgian Women's Cup.

The rivalry that means most locally runs against IHC Leuven, close enough in distance to be called a streekderby, with HYC Herentals the other fixture that sharpens attention. The club now also feeds a second team, Future Golden Sharks, into the Belgian 1st Division, giving the pathway from the academy somewhere to land before the senior roster.

The name still invoked when the club's best season comes up is Martin Váchal's. His 2017-18 tally of 102 goals and 77 assists, 179 points in one campaign, is the mark against which every Sharks forward since has been measured, with only Marek Ziarny's 133 career points coming anywhere close on the all-time list.