Yokohama Grits

In the middle of the 2020–21 season, when the Yokohama Grits should have been playing their first year in the Asia League, there was no league to play in — the pandemic wiped the schedule out before it started, and the club that had been built to bring professional hockey back to the Greater Tokyo area instead spent its opening months in a one-off tournament, the Asia League Japan Cup, just to get on the ice at all.

Grits Sports Innovators Corporation, led by Akihito Usui, had set the team up in May 2019 with a specific gap in mind: no professional side had represented Yokohama before, and the wider Tokyo region had gone without one since the Seibu Prince Rabbits folded in 2009. The Asia League confirmed the Grits as its eighth member in June 2020.

Mike Kennedy, a former NHL player, took the bench as founding head coach and carried the team through its first two seasons before Jeff Flanagan succeeded him in 2022. On the ice, forward Alex Rauter has built the franchise scoring record, 124 points in 119 games, while Atsuki Ikeda has simply played more games than anyone else who has worn the jersey, 144 and counting. Off it, former MLB outfielder Alex Ramirez joined as Co-President in 2022.

Titles have not come. Fifth place in the regular season, in 2022–23 and again in 2024–25, marks the club's best league finishes. Home games are played in front of no more than 2,500 people at the KOSÉ Shin-Yokohama Skate Center, and the Grits have yet to settle into a fixed rivalry — six years in, still the only professional side in their own city, they have no derby opponent to point to, only a league table they are still trying to climb.