Rostock

Karol Bartanus spent nine seasons at the Eishalle Rostock and left as the club's all-time leading scorer, 871 points from 380 games. The same caution shaped the club a decade earlier, when the 2000 Regionalliga win ended in a runner-up finish in the promotion round.

The club's roots go back further than any of that, to April 1953, when an ice hockey section was formed inside BSG Motor Rostock. What followed was a chain of mergers and re-foundings running through Dynamo, Empor, Chemie and the dockworkers' side BSG Schifffahrt/Hafen, until two of those amateur sections joined forces in July 1990 to form Rostocker EC. Dimitri Kramarenko, who played eleven seasons from 1994, is the only man whose number has been retired outright, 21, earned across 511 goals and 423 assists. Branislav Hippik kept goal in front of him for four of those years, pulling off saves and handstands that earned him the nickname Happy Hippo and a retired number of his own, 35.

Rostock's derby is with EHC Timmendorfer Strand. Fewer than two thousand fit into the Eishalle Rostock for it, but on derby night that is enough to make the building feel full.