HC Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk

In March 2018 the Kontinental Hockey League removed Yugra from its ranks over financial and organisational failings rather than anything settled on ice, sending back to the second tier a club that had reached the playoffs in each of its first two seasons among the elite. It was a fall as fast as the rise that had preceded it. Founded on 1 October 2006, Yugra won the Second League in its first season and the First League in its second, then took the Vysshaya Liga's Cup Bratina in successive years, 2008/09 and 2009/10, which earned promotion into the KHL for 2010/11. In that debut season it reached the Conference Quarterfinals before losing to Metallurg Magnitogorsk, and repeated the run a year later against Traktor Chelyabinsk.

The exclusion in 2018 sent Yugra back to the VHL, where it has since rebuilt around the Siberian rivalries known locally as the Kings of Siberia — contests with Metallurg Novokuznetsk, Sokol Krasnoyarsk, Rubin Tyumen and others that carry more weight than most league fixtures. Under Vadim Epanchintsev the club won the Cup Petrova in 2020/21, beating Metallurg Novokuznetsk in the final, added the Opening Cup in both 2021/22 and 2022/23, and took the Cup Petrova again in 2025/26 against Khimik. The team plays as the Mammoths of Yugra, a name drawn from the woolly mammoth that stands as a symbol of the Khanty-Mansi region, in front of 5,500 seats at Yugra Arena.

Ivan Lekomtsev wears the captain's armband now, leading a side still shaped by the club's habit of building its own: Yegor Zavragin, voted the VHL's best rookie in 2024, came up through the same academy before his name turned up on an NHL draft list.