Colors Red, White General manager Oliver Pilloni Head coach Mike Pellegrims Founded 18 September 1909 | Owner(s) Dr. Will Schasche Arena/Stadium Stadthalle Color Red, White | |
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League Erste Bank Eishockey Liga Profiles | ||
EC KAC, or the Klagenfurt Athletic Sports Club, is a professional ice hockey team in the Austrian Erste Bank Hockey League. The team plays their home games in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, Austria at Stadthalle Klagenfurt. EC KAC has won the most Austrian ice hockey Championships, a total of 30 times including 11 consecutive titles from 1964 to 1974, and four consecutive from 1985 to 1988. Most recently they won it in 2013
Contents
History
The Klagenfurt Athletics Sports Club was founded on 18 September 1909 as an association. In 1919 the first attempts to makeup a Hockey sector were trialled with an initial two-year apprenticeship from 1923 to 1925, before Hockey as a fully fledged association was established in 1926.
In 1926 EC KAC joined the Austrian Ice Hockey Federation. At that time there were no uniforms, and hockey was played in gym shorts, soccer socks, football jerseys, and as skates were called 'Friesen' which used shoes made of wood with a metal bar as a runner, which were laced with leather straps on the feet. The puck was initially made from two nailed together soles of women's shoes. Much depended more on the ingenuity and dedication of the players, and the preparation of the playing surface snow at the Kreuzberglteich.
In the 1933–34 season, EC KAC won their first league title and thus stopped the almost uninterrupted dominance of the Vienna Ice Skating Association. It marked the first time the title had not been awarded to a team from Vienna. The Second World War interrupted play abruptly and post-war it took a long time to get the league back functioning properly. However, many stars from the KAC's first league title success could again be counted to be the nucleus and further accelerated the rise of EC KAC well into the 1950s.
Between 1952 and 1960, KAC managed three further League titles, in a period in which Innsbruck EV were prominent in the Austrian Championship. With games still played outdoors and susceptible to inclement weather, on 22 November 1959, the Stadthalle Klagenfurt complex opened, which after several modifications is still in use today as the venue of EC KAC.
At the turn of the 1960s with the influx of influential players such as Dieter Kalt Snr and Sepp Puschnig, KAC started the seed in dominating the Austrian Championship from 1964 to 1980, in which the title went fifteen times to Klagenfurt. The only competitor in that time was ATSE Graz, which broke up title championships in 1975 and 1978.
During this time, the EC KAC also partook in several European Cups. They first played in the 1965–66 season, and in the following 1966–67 season, the team reached the semi-finals and had to compete, as in the following season, against ZLK Brno. In the 1969–70 season, EC KAC played as beaten finalists against HC CSKA Moscow. Overall, EC KAC participated nineteen times in the tournament, only two participations fewer than the record holder CSKA Moscow.
Current roster
Updated August 22, 2016.