Dnipro Kherson

No fixture carries a name here the way a derby elsewhere might, but two teams give Kherson's players something to grind their teeth over: matches with HC Kryzhynka Kyiv get called a derby by habit, and the meetings with HC Kremenchuk have turned into the sharper needle, fought hard without ever earning a proper title of their own.

Kherson has iced a team since 1999, playing in yellow and blue and known locally as Dnipryany. For years the club sat just below the top of the Ukrainian Hockey League, taking silver in 2018–19 and bronze four times over, in 2019–20, 2021–22, 2022–23 and 2023–24, alongside five regional Black Sea Cup wins between 2009 and 2015. The step it could not take was the league title itself.

Then came 2022, and with it the occupation of Kherson. The team could no longer set foot in its own city, let alone its 450-seat Favorit Arena, and shifted its home games to Kyiv's ATEK Ice Arena, with detours through Bila Tserkva and Kremenchuk. Displaced and still calling itself Kherson's club, it kept winning enough to matter, and in 2023–24 it beat HC Sokil Kyiv in the final to take the Ukrainian Championship for the first time.

The run through that stretch had a face in Artem Hrebenyk, a defenceman who put up 14 goals and 14 assists in 29 games in 2022–23 and became the first Ukrainian defenceman to score five goals in a single national championship match before moving on to clubs in Finland, France and Poland. Mykola Dvornyk carried a similar weight up front that same season with eight goals and 22 assists.

What the club still cannot do is play at home. The Favorit Arena stands in a city Dnipro Kherson has not been able to return to, and the championship it finally won came without a single game played there.