Ambrì-Piotta

The Gottardo Arena still carries the shape of its predecessor, the open-air Nuova Valascia, where fans stood through Ticino winters rather than sat. Ambrì-Piotta plays there because the club and the village it represents have never been separable: this is Leventina, the rural, working-class north of the canton, set against lakeside Lugano to the south, and the Derby Ticinese between them carries that divide onto the ice each season.

Ambrì has been promoted to the top flight only once, in 1985, and has stayed there since. What it has not done in that time is win the National League: 1998–99 remains its only final, lost, though that same season the club took the IIHF Continental Cup, and added the IIHF Super Cup for good measure. The Spengler Cup followed decades later, in 2022, against HC Sparta Prague.

Peter Jaks is the name attached to the club's identity more than any other: thirteen seasons, 849 matches, 942 points, and a number 19 that has not been worn since. Dale McCourt, a first overall NHL draft pick, spent his last playing years here before his number 15 followed Jaks's into retirement.

In 2013 the club's finances gave way, and it was supporters, not a board or a sponsor, who put roughly five million Swiss francs together to keep it going. A domestic championship is the one thing that money, and everything since, has not bought.