Augsburger Panther

Getting into that founding class took a while: the professional side only split off from the amateur parent club as a limited company in 1994, the same year it won the 2. Bundesliga and claimed one of the original places at the top table.

The parent body, the Augsburger Eislaufverein, goes back to 1878. Those trophies are thin at senior level — no DEL title, no DEB-Pokal — and the club has had to work its way back more than once, dropping out of the Bundesliga in 1974 and again in 1979 before returning. The 2010–11 season came closest to undoing all of it, with the Panther finishing bottom of the table and only just staying up.

The youth setup has carried more silverware than the first team, with a German Youth Championship in 1974 and a Junior Championship in 1998. The club colours, red, green and white, are drawn straight from Augsburg's own, and four numbers hang retired in the rafters at the Curt-Frenzel-Stadion: Paul Ambros's 5, Duanne Moeser's 7, Steffen Tölzer's 13 and T.J. Trevelyan's 24.

Tölzer is the name that runs longest through the club's history, 726 games in the shirt.