HV71

HV71 was founded on May 24, 1971, as a merger between Husqvarna IF and Vätterstads IK, and initially used the name Huskvarna/Vätterstads IF, but later that year it was shortened to the current name HV71. The club were first promoted to the top Swedish league, Elitserien, in the 1978–79 season, but were relegated after only one season. They were promoted again in the 1984–85 season and have remained in the top division ever since, with the exception of the 2021–22 season, and are as of the 2000s a well-established top club in Sweden. The club has won the national championship five times; 1995, 2004, 2008, 2010 and 2017. For a few years in the late 1990s, HV71 was also called the Blue Bulls.

Many Swedes associate HV71 with the club's old arena Rosenlundshallen, which was inaugurated in 1958 as Sweden's first indoor ice hockey arena, but was replaced in 2000 with the new and improved Kinnarps Arena. As the new arena was built around and on top of Rosenlundshallen, HV71 practically played its games, in the 1999–2000 season on a construction site.

On December 6, 2006, HV71 topped the Elitserien after a 5–2 win over Färjestads BK, at the same time, the club's two youth teams (under 20 and 18 years old) topped their leagues, J20 SuperElit and J18 Elit. This was an event that had never happened before in HV71's club history.

HV71 won its first national championship season 1994–95 as the last (8th) team to qualify for the playoffs. The club remains the only team in Swedish ice hockey history to win the play-offs after finishing in 8th place after the end of the regular season. In the quarter-finals HV beat Djurgårdens IF Hockey, the team that finished first in the regular season, in three straight games. In the semifinals they came back, after having lost the first two games to Malmö Redhawks, the team who was the defending champions, and turned the series around to a 3–2 victory. Finally they managed a decisive sudden death victory in the finals against Brynäs IF, in the fourth period of the fifth game to win the championship. The name of the historical scorer was Johan Lindbom, but other big heroes during the play-offs were the goalie Boo Ahl and the Finnish center-forward Esa Keskinen.

The second championship was won during the season 2003–04 after beating Modo Hockey with a 4–2 series, Frölunda HC with 4–2 in games in the semi-finals, and then winning the finals with a 4–3 match series against Färjestads BK. In the quarter-finals HV71 set a new Swedish record, for scoring the most goals in one period, with seven in the first period, of the second game against Modo Hockey. In fact, they scored the seven goals, during the last ten minutes of the period. The game ended with a 10–1 victory. In the final, goalie Stefan Liv managed to keep his goal empty, in all four games that the team won, the two last games ending 1–0 and 5–0 respectively. He also kept the goal empty in the last semi-final, which means he managed this, for five consecutive wins.

HV71 ended the regular season as the second placed team after Färjestads BK. HV chose to meet Brynäs IF in the quarter-finals and managed after seven games (4 wins and 3 losses) to continue to the semifinals. The team faced Modo Hockey and even with home advantage HV did not manage to proceed to the finals having lost four out of seven games. This meant that HV for the second consecutive year lost a seven games series in the semifinal to the eventual Swedish champion.

During the season the newly acquired defenceman Johan Åkerman was a trendsetting player and also made his national debut for Sweden at the age of 34. HV's starting goaltender, Erik Ersberg, had his breakthrough and played for the national team; and was awarded with the Honken Trophy as Sweden's best goaltender. During the off-season he signed with the NHL team Los Angeles Kings.