HV71

Jönköping sits at the southern tip of Lake Vättern, an industrial town built on Husqvarna's factories, and its ice hockey club still carries the split heritage of that town: HV71 formed in 1971 out of a merger between Husqvarna IF and Vätterstad IF, taking its name from their initials and the year itself.

The club has won the Le Mat Trophy five times, and the first, in 1995, remains the one worth telling: HV71 had finished the regular season eighth, and no team before or since has won the Swedish championship from that low a seed. They beat Brynäs IF in the final that year, and again in 2008 and 2010, before adding a fifth title in 2017 against Skellefteå AIK.

Stefan Liv kept goal through three of those championships, in 2004, 2008 and 2011, before he died in the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash later in 2011; his number 1 hangs retired alongside Johan Davidsson's 76, the club's all-time scorer with 671 points in 920 matches. HV71's academy has sent players into the NHL for two decades, Niklas Hjalmarsson among them, a Stanley Cup winner with the Chicago Blackhawks.

The club's recent history has been rougher than its trophy case suggests. HV71 finished 14th in the SHL in 2020–21 and dropped into HockeyAllsvenskan for the first time in decades, then won that division and the promotion playoffs the following season to bounce straight back. Staying up has proved harder than returning: finishes of 11th, 13th and 14th in the three seasons since have meant playout hockey just to survive in the top flight, against Leksands IF, the old rival from the Jönköping–Leksand derby.

Husqvarna Garden holds 7,000, a modest capacity for a club with five championships, in a town more used to hearing "HÅVE" sung from the stands than counting its seats.