HC Kosice
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Hockey Club Kosice is a Slovak professional ice hockey club based in Kosice that competes in the Slovak Extraliga, the top tier of Slovak ice hockey. It is the most successful hockey club in Slovakia and the former Czechoslovakia, having won the Tipos Extraliga ten times, the Czechoslovak First Ice Hockey League twice, the 1st. Slovak National Hockey League once, the IIHF Continental Cup once, the Tatra Cup 11 times, and the Rona Cup four times. The club is nicknamed "Oceliari" ("Steelers" in English). The team plays at the Steel Arena in Kosice.
The club was established in Kosice in 1962 as an army hockey club called TJ Dukla Kosice. At that time, there were two weak regional ice hockey clubs in the city. The new club was much stronger and joined the Czechoslovak Hockey League within two years. In 1966, Dukla changed its name to TJ VSZ Kosice. In 1986, the club became the Ice Hockey Champions of Czechoslovakia for the first time, beating HC Dukla Jihlava in the finals. It won again in 1988, beating HC Sparta Prague. At that time, the club was the second-best ice hockey club in Europe after CSKA Moscow. After Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, VSZ Kosice became a member of the Slovak Extraliga, which it soon went on to win three times. In 1998, the club changed its name to HC Kosice.
Information sourced from HC Kosice website and Wikipedia.
