Nikkō Ice Bucks

Four times the Ice Bucks have taken the All Japan Ice Hockey Championship, and the most recent, in 2024, turned on a goal from Kento Suzuki that decided the final. The following season they added the Asia League Ice Hockey Japan Cup as well, a first for the club in that competition. A regular-season title in the Asia League itself has stayed out of reach; the closest they came was finishing runners-up in 2011–12.

The club carries something of a memorial in its name. Furukawa Electric had fielded a team in Nikkō since 1925 and was one of the founding members of the Japanese Ice Hockey League in 1966; when that team folded, a group of citizens in the town built a replacement from scratch in August 1999, the first club of its kind run on citizen support rather than a single company's backing. It entered the domestic league that same season and moved into the newly formed, international Asia League four years later. For a stretch between 2005 and 2007 the team also represented Kobe and played as Nikkō Kobe IceBucks, before that arrangement ended and the name reverted.

Dave Bonk remains the club's all-time leading scorer, with 366 points in 252 games, but the player most associated with the Ice Bucks is Yutaka Fukufuji, who joined in 2010 after becoming the first Japanese-born goaltender to appear in an NHL game, with the Los Angeles Kings. Captain Kosuke Ohtsu leads the current side out at the Nikkō Kirifuri Ice Arena, a 2,000-capacity rink split between 1,608 seats and standing room.