České Budějovice

Václav Prospal grew up here before the NHL ever knew his name, and so did Radek Dvořák and Martin Hanzal. The club traces back to a merger of two local sides, Viktoria and Slovan, into AC Stadion České Budějovice on 10 January 1928, and it has barely kept one name since: SKP, then Motor, then HC České Budějovice, then Mountfield.

The names weren't cosmetic. In 1950–51, playing as SKP, the club took the Czechoslovak Extraliga title. Then in 2013 came the split known locally as the War of the Beers: a sponsorship dispute with the Budweiser Budvar brewery sent the professional franchise east to Hradec Králové, where it plays on as Mountfield HK. What stayed behind had to be rebuilt from the second tier under a new name, ČEZ Motor České Budějovice, wearing the old red, blue, yellow and white.

It clawed its way back to the Extraliga in 2020, only to drop again in 2023, and now plays its hockey in the Czech 1. Liga at the Budvar Arena, 6,421 seats. Derby weekends still carry weight — Škoda Plzeň is the bigger name, but it's the games against Tábor that locals call the Jihočeské derby, the South Bohemian one. Academy products like Jáchym Kondelík have started coming home from North America rather than only leaving, which is its own kind of return.

All of it still runs back to that January day in 1928, two clubs becoming one.