Skalica

The closest HK Skalica came to the Slovak Extraliga title was the 2008–09 final, lost to HC Košice, with Žigmund Pálffy finishing that season as the league's scoring leader. Third-place finishes followed in 1998–99 and 2007–08, but the top step never arrived, and the Rona Cup, won in 2012, remains the one trophy the club can point to outright.

The name on the crest has changed with the decades and with the town's institutions: Tekla, Tatran, ZVL, and then HK 36 Skalica, carried until 2016. That year the original entity collapsed under debt and was pushed out of the Extraliga altogether. What plays under the HK Skalica name now was assembled that August, built around a licence bought from HC Dukla Senica for the second-tier 1. Liga, where the club has since finished runner-up three times without going the last step further.

Dukla Senica remains the opponent that matters most, and the meetings between the two are known locally as the Záhorské derby, a fixture that keeps its edge regardless of which division either side sits in. Home games are played in front of just over 4,000 at the Skalica ice stadium, in green, white and red, the colours behind the "Zelení" nickname the town still uses for its team.

The club's clearest calling card remains the run of players who left Skalica for the NHL, among them Tomáš Malec and Miroslav Zálešák, but it is Pálffy the town still measures its hockey against, the scoring leader in the season Skalica came closest to the title it has never won.