Ilves Tampere U20

Twenty-two junior titles came in two distinct waves either side of a long dry spell: the first between 1945 and 1982, the second confined to just two years, 1991 and 1994, before an eleven-year gap closed with the title in 2005 and, more recently, in 2016. No other stretch since has matched the run of the 1940s and 1950s, when the U20 side won five championships in eight years.

The team plays as Pikkukissat, the Little Cats, a name kept apart from Tihiset, the senior side's own nickname, so that the junior operation is never mistaken for a farm team with borrowed colours. Green, yellow and black carry across from the parent club, founded in 1931, but the junior sides stayed at Tampereen Jäähalli, known locally as Hakametsä, when the seniors left for Nokia Arena in 2021.

Tuukka Rask and Jyrki Lumme both came up through this system before their NHL careers, and Otto Koivula followed the same path more recently. What the U20 side is measured against, year on year, is not a league table but a single fixture: the Tampereen derbi against Tappara U20, a rivalry that runs through every age group the two clubs field.

The senior Ilves side has taken sixteen Finnish championships to the junior team's twenty-two, and the gap between the last U20 title, in 2016, and the present has now stretched past what either of the earlier gaps in the club's junior history covered.