Merano

Merano are chasing something that has eluded them in every season of the Alps Hockey League: the title itself. They came closest last time out, reaching the 2025–26 final before losing out to HC Gherdëina, and that near-miss now sits alongside a domestic record built almost entirely in Serie A and Serie B rather than on the international stage the club now competes in.

Between those years and since, HC Merano has spent more time climbing back through Serie B and Serie C than sitting at the top of Serie A.

The club went under in 2008, when the original entity that had run since 1968 went bankrupt.

In the 1980s and 1990s the roster carried a run of players with NHL experience — Mark Morrison, Bob Manno, Morris Lukowich, Jari Torkki, Zarley Zalapski among them. What has stayed constant is the rivalry inside South Tyrol, against HC Bolzano, Ritten Sport and HC Gherdëina, the same Gherdëina that denied them the Alps Hockey League title.

Two Serie A crowns in thirteen years apart is the gap Merano are still trying to close on a bigger stage.