Photo: Bildbyrån
A Swede takes over when the NHL club Chicago Blackhawks fires the coach.
Anders Sörensen, 49, makes history as the first Swedish head coach in the NHL.
But the appointment is on temporary basis.
The Chicago Blackhawks have had a leaden start to the season, are last in the NHL and on Thursday night the news came that the club is firing Luke Richardson.
– As we have started to take steps forward in our rebuilding process, we felt that the results did not meet our expectations of maintaining a higher level of performance this season. Finally, we came to the conclusion that a change was necessary. We wish Luke and his family all the best in the future, says the club’s general manager Kyle Davidson in a press release.
Sörensen gets the chance in the Chicago Blackhawks
Anders Sorensen has been the head coach of Chicago’s farm team Rockford since November 2021. He joined the Chicago organization in 2014-15 as a player developer. Now he gets the highest trust a hockey coach can get – to coach in the NHL. No other Swede has done that before. Sörensen is the third European coach in the league after Alpo Suhonen (Finland) and Ivan Hlinka (Czech Republic), but it had been more than 20 years since someone from Europe was the head coach.
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“The plan for Chicago is for Anders Sörensen to be interim head coach for the rest of the season, after which the Blackhawks plan to conduct a recruitment process for a new head coach. Sörensen can, depending on how he performs, obviously become a candidate. The Blackhawks think highly of him,” writes the NHL journalist Pierre LeBrun on X.
Anders Sörensen has coached Södertälje
Sörensen is from Södertälje and was an assistant coach in SSK for three seasons in the hockey Allsvenskan. During the 2013-14 season, his last at the club, he was allowed to step in as temporary head coach for a period when Johan Strömwall got fired.
Super talent plays in Chicago Connor Bedard19, who was drafted number one in 2023. The Canadian, however, cannot be part of the national team squad that will play the Four Nations against the USA, Sweden and Finland in February. But at least he gets the chance to work with Sörensen for a while to come.
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How big and fun this is. Good luck with your new job, Anders Sörensen. Many of us are keeping our fingers crossed that it will work out.
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