Benatky

The season that took Benátky nad Jizerou out of its own weight class began in 2007–08, when the club won the Czech 3. Liga and earned promotion into the second tier. What followed was harder to explain by the numbers alone: the club kept a team in the 2. Liga for fourteen straight seasons. The arrangement that made it possible came the same year, when Benátky merged with Bílí Tygři Liberec and became, in effect, their farm side. Liberec's coaching staff and facilities came with the deal, and Benátky's rosters through those years often skewed young, with squads averaging under twenty.

That pipeline sent at least one player through to the NHL. Jan Jeník played for Benátky in 2017–18 and 2018–19 before Arizona drafted him. Jiří Kudrna took a different route through the same club, playing there before returning as head coach from 2017 to 2019 and later taking charge of Liberec itself in 2025.

The Liberec partnership held until 2021–22, when Benátky finished fifteenth and dropped back down to the third tier. Before any of that, the club had already changed its name three times over — Sokol, then Spartak, then Karbo — as the organisations behind Czech sport shifted with the decades, settling on HC Benátky nad Jizerou only in 1993.

Locally, the fixture that still draws attention is against Mladá Boleslav, whose town sits some fifteen to twenty kilometres away; games against their reserve side carry the weight of a derby regardless of league position. Benátečtí, as the team is known around the Zimní stadion Benátky nad Jizerou, now play their hockey back in the third tier, working from a rink built for 2,500 to find a way toward the second.