Považská Bystrica

Patrik Rybár and Považská Bystrica still measures itself by what he and others like him carried out of a rink built for 2,466 people. The team traces itself to 1938, though it took the name HK 95 Panthers only in 1995, when the club was reorganised. Locals call it Panteri.

The honours board is modest by design: two Slovak 2. Liga titles, in 1998–99 and 2000–01. Považská Bystrica has since pushed above that level — third place in the Slovak 1. Liga in 2023–24, and by 2025–26 a place in the Tipos Extraliga itself, finishing sixth in the regular season before HK Košice ended their run in the quarter-finals.

Its academy has kept sending players up rather than just producing them: Daniel Gachulinec left for Slovan Bratislava and won an Extraliga title there in 2021–22 before moving on to Žilina. That move is not incidental — Vlci Žilina, thirty kilometres down the road, is the club's oldest rival, and their meetings are known simply as the Považie derby, a fixture with no love lost between two towns that share a valley and little else.

The ground itself, the Zimný štadión, holds 2,466 on a good night.