Litvínov U20

In the spring of 2014 Litvínov's under-20s stood one series from a title the junior side had never won, only to lose the final and hand the trophy elsewhere. It remains the closest the team has come since the Czech Junior Extraliga began in 1999; before that there were semi-final exits in 2008–09, 2009–10 and 2011–12, and nothing since.

The junior ranks exist to feed the senior club, and for decades they did it well: Robert Reichel and Petr Klima both came through before the NHL took them. Ivan Hlinka came up through the same academy, and the rink where the juniors now play, Zimní stadion Ivana Hlinky, carries his name. Pavel Francouz followed a similar path and was in goal when the senior side beat Oceláři Třinec in a Game 7 to win the 2015 Extraliga, the club's first league title since 1959.

None of that silverware belongs to the juniors themselves. Their fixtures against Karlovy Vary, played as the Podkrušnohorské derby, and against Kladno and Liberec carry the same edge as the senior meetings, without a trophy to show for it.

The system feeding all of it was set up on 8 November 1945, when a hockey department was formed at the works club SK Stalinovy závody in Horní Litvínov. Everything since, the unbroken run in the top flight from 1959, the players who left for the NHL, the final the juniors reached and lost, grew out of that one department.