Ilves Tampere

Ilves is back in the Champions Hockey League this season, having faced Lausanne HC and Rouen Dragons in 2024–25 after reaching the round of 16 the year before, where Dynamo Pardubice ended the run; a tie against Red Bull Munich in 2020–21 never even happened, cancelled by the pandemic.

The club grew out of Tampere in the spring of 1931, and for much of the twentieth century it was the team to beat in Finland: sixteen national championships between 1936 and 1985, plus the last Finnish Cup ever contested, won in 1971. Only one club in the country's history has done better.

None of that silences Tappara, the other side of Tampere, and the derby between the two is treated as the oldest and fiercest in Finnish hockey. Jyrki Lumme wore Ilves colours for 1,090 games before an NHL career; Tuukka Rask started here too, went on to lift the Stanley Cup with the Boston Bruins, and now holds a stake in Ilves Hockey Oy, the company that has run the club's top team since 2000.

The lynx-head crest on the jersey came back in 1999, after a spell in the 1990s when the club tried something else and supporters made clear it hadn't worked. Relegation has never touched Ilves since the Liiga was founded in 1975, though 2010, 2012 and 2013 came close enough to notice.

What Ilves has not managed since 1985 is another championship.