Schwenninger

That absence traces back to a 2003 insolvency. Schwenninger ERC, as the ice hockey side had been known since splitting from its parent swimming club in 1950, dropped out of the DEL and spent a decade in the 2. Bundesliga, finishing runners-up in the playoffs three times without going up. The route back was administrative rather than sporting: in 2013 the club bought the Hannover Scorpions' league licence and took the ice under a new name, Schwenninger Wild Wings.

No DEL or Bundesliga title has followed any of that, and the closest the club has come was a semi-final finish in the 1990 playoffs. The one trophy on record is the Deutscher Eishockey-Pokal, won in 1988. Andreas Renz built the club's appearance record inside that long stretch without a championship, playing his entire career in Schwenningen; Mike Bullard, on the ice from 2000 to 2003, still holds DEL records for goals and points scored for the club.

Games against Adler Mannheim are billed as the Südwest-Derby, and both sides now measure the rivalry from the same regional stage — the DEL, which the Wild Wings have called home again since 2013, twelve years after they were forced out of it.