Kolner

Kölner Haie sit in the DEL, Germany's top division, still trading on a name that carries more weight in Cologne than any table position of late. The club traces back to 10 August 1972, when the ice hockey section split off from Kölner EK as Kölner Eishockey Club; the Haie name did not arrive until 1995, the same year it delivered the club's first title under it.

Eight German championships stretch from 1977 to 2002, but the two eras barely resemble each other. The Bundesliga run of the 1980s, six titles in eleven years, belonged to a club still called KEC. What followed nearly ended the story: a financial crisis in 1992-1994 pushed the Haie to the brink before the 1995 DEL title, under the new name, reset the club entirely. A second followed in 2002 under Hans Zach. The Spengler Cup came in 1999, the German Cup in 2004, and three European Cup finals were lost without ever being won.

Since 1998 the Haie have played at the LANXESS arena, which holds 18,500 for hockey and replaced the old rink on Lentstraße. Düsseldorfer EG provide the opposition for what is billed locally as the Rheinisches Derby, a fixture some here simply call the mother of all derbies.

No player is tied to the club more plainly than Ralph Philipp, whose number 8 is the only one Cologne has retired. Coaching spells came and went across five decades, but it was Uwe Krupp, once a Haie defenceman himself before his NHL career, who returned to the bench and gave the club a link between its playing past and its recent one.