Neman Grodno

When Neman take the ice against Metallurg Zhlobin, people in Grodno talk about it as a derby, even though the term attached most often to Belarusian hockey's regional rivalry — the Polesian Derby — belongs properly to the Zhlobin-Gomel fixture. That hasn't stopped Neman and Zhlobin from treating each other as the team to beat.

The club traces back further than its current name suggests. It grew out of KSM Grodno and then ShVSM Grodno through the early 1980s, and in the 1987/88 season ShVSM merged with SKIF-ShVSM Minsk to form Progress Grodno, playing in the Soviet Second League. The Neman name arrived in 1991.

Seven Extraliga titles came in two clusters — 1998, 1999 and 2001, then a second wave from 2013 to 2018 — with the 2014–15 Continental Cup win sitting at the peak of that second run. He was also named MVP of that 2015 Continental Cup. Oleg Malashkevich's 441 points across 656 games over fifteen seasons belongs to an earlier chapter of the same story.

The Grodno Ice Sports Palace holds just 2,487. The Wolves, as they're known locally, still measure themselves against Zhlobin first.