Södertälje SK

Kent Nilsson learned the game on Scaniarinken ice before Colorado and Calgary ever heard his name, and Södertälje SK still counts him among the reasons the club has four members in the Swedish Hockey Hall of Fame, alongside Håkan Loob, Peter Lindmark and Thomas Steen. The rink itself has never left the neighbourhood on Nyköpingsvägen since the section that plays there today was formed in 1925 out of what began, twenty-three years earlier, as Södertälje Idrottsklubb.

That 1925 season ended with a championship in its very first year, and the club, known around Södertälje as Tälje, added six more with the Le Mat Trophy, the last of them in 1985. Between those two dates sits the run that still separates the club from the rest of Swedish hockey: fifty-three consecutive seasons in the top flight, from 1925 through to 1978, a stretch no other side in the country has matched.

Elitserien began in 1975 with Södertälje as one of its founding members, and for a while the club belonged there as a matter of course. AIK, close enough down the E4 to make the fixture feel local, has supplied the sharpest rivalry along the way. The top tier has since slipped out of reach — the team now plays in HockeyAllsvenskan — but Scaniarinken still holds roughly 6,120 for the nights it matters most.