HK Partizan Beograd won the Serbian ice hockey championship for the 4th year straight. The finals series between Partizan and HK Vojvodina Novi Sad was not played to an end due to the fire that burned down the hockey arena of Novi Sad and most of the Vojvodina players' equipment. Partizan led the series 2-1 when the championship was prematurely terminated and the team was subsequently declared the champion of the 2008-09 season.
Serbian Championships
2009: HK Partizan Beograd
2008: HK Partizan Beograd
2007: HK Partizan Beograd
2006: HK Partizan Beograd
2005: Crevena Zvezda Beograd
2004: HK Vojvodina Novi Sad
2003: HK Vojvodina Novi Sad
2002: HK Vojvodina Novi Sad
2001: HK Vojvodina Novi Sad
2000: HK Vojvodina Novi Sad
1999: HK Vojvodina Novi Sad
1998: HK Vojvodina Novi Sad
1997: Crevena Zvezda Beograd
1996: Crevena Zvezda Beograd
1995: HK Partizan Beograd
1994: HK Partizan Beograd
1993: Crevena Zvezda Beograd
1992: Crevena Zvezda Beograd
HK Partizan only suffered one defeat in the 16 games regular season (4-6 at home to HK Novi Sad early in the season) and the team won the regular season with a clear margin to the three other teams that qualified for the playoffs: Vojvodina Novi Sad, HK Novi Sad and Zrvena Zvezda Beograd. HK Beostar finished last in the league with only one victory (over HK Novi Sad) in the regular season. In the offseason, Beostar encountered serious financial troubles causing the team's foreign players, including the excellent Slovakian goaltender Jankura, to leave the team. Without financial means, Beostar basically played with young junior players all season.
Crvena Zvezda, which finished 4th only one point behind HK Novi Sad and three points behind Vojvodina Novi Sad, refused to play the mighty HK Partizan in the semifinals on the grounds that Vojvodina allegedly had used an ineligible backup goaltender, Murray Cobb. Crvena filed a protest to the Serbian hockey federation. The protest was rejected and Crvena refused to play the semifinals.
In the finals, HK Vojvodina, led by their Canadian duo Marc-Andre Fournier and Fred Perowne to a 1-0 lead in the series after a 6-3 surprise win in Belgrade in the first game. Partizan roared back to tie the series with a 4-0 win in the second game. The third game in ended with a 3-2 shootout win for Partizan, and then the hockey arena of Novi Sad burned down. This was devastating not only for the teams of Novi Sad but also for the championship. The final series was very tight and it is possible that it could have gone the distance had it been played to the end. The two teams did indeed meet each other in the finals of the Pannonian league one month earlier, and Vojvodina won that series 3:1.
HK Partizan was led by five Czech and Ukrainian imports (the Czech trio Bohuslav Subr, Ondrej Mertl, Ales Dvorak and the Ukrainian duo Anton Butocnov and Vitaly Gavrilyuk) and Boris Gabric -- arguably the best Serbian player in the league.
