Aaron Ness Announces Retirement
According to an announcement from the AHL’s Hershey Bears, defenseman and captain Aaron Ness has retired. Ness has a handful of games of NHL experience, though most of his professional days were spent in the AHL.
Ness’ professional career began in 2008, being selected with the 40th overall pick of that summer’s draft by the New York Islanders. Drafted out of the famous Minnesota state high school hockey pipeline, Ness jumped to the NCAA’s University of Minnesota the next season. He spent three years with the Golden Gophers, scoring six goals and 43 points in 111 games.
After his junior season, Ness signed his entry-level contract with the Islanders and began playing for their AHL affiliate, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. During his time with the Islanders organization, he spent most of it with the Sound Tigers, where he was named the team’s captain for the 2014-15 season. He had the second-best production of his AHL career that year, scoring eight goals and 45 points in 74 games.
Additionally, Ness earned an extended look in the NHL with New York. During the 2013-14 season, in a depth role, Ness registered one goal and three points in 20 games for the Islanders, averaging 14:48 of ice time per game. Unfortunately, that relationship didn’t last much longer, and Ness left as a free agent in 2015 to join the Washington Capitals.
The Capitals organization is where Ness enjoyed the best years of his career. From the beginning of the 2015-16 campaign to the 2017-18 season, Ness skated in 18 games for the Capitals while tallying three assists. Similar to his time with the Islanders, Ness spent most of his time in the AHL, this time with the Hershey Bears.
Ahead of the 2019-20 campaign, Ness signed with the Arizona Coyotes and left after two seasons to sign an AHL deal with the Providence Bruins. After his one-year stint in Rhode Island, Ness returned to the Bears on another AHL deal.
Now in his second stint with Hershey, Ness was immediately given a leadership position on the club and was named the team’s captain last season. He helped the Bears capture back-to-back Calder Cup championships in 2023 and 2024.
In total, Ness has a modest NHL scoring line of one goal and seven points in 72 games. Still, he amassed 61 goals and 339 points in 818 AHL games, with another two goals and 19 points in 81 postseason contests. Including his two Calder Cup rings, Ness enjoyed a 15-year career in the AHL, with over half of those being spent with the Bears. We at PHR congratulate Ness on his career and wish him the best in his next chapter.
Claude Giroux To Continue Playing For 2026-27 Season
Veteran scorer Claude Giroux will not hang up his skates for at least one more season, reports Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic. According to LeBrun, Giroux “needed some time after the season to mull over his future” as he was considering retirement, but now the 38-year-old “has decided he wants to come back and play another season.”
Giroux’s decision means a 1,345-game NHL career that began in 2007-08 will continue for at least one more campaign. Complicating Giroux’s situation is the fact that he is a pending unrestricted free agent. Giroux has been playing for his hometown Ottawa Senators since 2022, arriving there from the Florida Panthers. Giroux was on the Panthers as a rental trade addition. Before that, he was a top scorer and face-of-the-franchise player for the Philadelphia Flyers.
One of the greatest Flyers in the franchise’s modern history, Giroux is no longer the star scorer he once was. At 38 years old, that’s to be expected. But he has shown himself to still be a productive scoring winger for the Senators even as he’s aged. In 2025-26, he scored 14 goals and 49 points. That’s not quite at the level of his debut season in the Canadian capital (35 goals, 79 points in 2022-23) but still more than strong enough to make him worth his cap hit of $2MM. (Base cap hit, he also earned $1MM in performance bonuses)
Looking ahead to next season, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Giroux will remain in Ottawa. Another one-year contract with a relatively low base salary and stocked full of performance bonuses, similar to the contract he played last season on, seems most appropriate.
Playing at least one more year, Giroux will be able to help the Senators try to win their first playoff series since their run to the Eastern Conference Final in 2017. He’ll also be chasing some individual milestones, like 1,400 games played, 400 goals, and 1,200 points.
Bob Hartley Announces Retirement
Bob Hartley, a longtime head coach in the NHL who won a Stanley Cup championship and a Jack Adams Award, announced his retirement from coaching today. Hartley coached Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL to a Gagarin Cup title earlier this week.
The announcement concludes a coaching career that began all the way back in the late 1980s. Hartley got his start in junior hockey, coaching the CJHL’s Hawkesbury Hawks. He coached the team to back-to-back titles in 1990 and 1991, achievements that landed him a role coaching in the QMJHL for the Laval Titan. In two seasons in Laval, Hartley went 81-52-7, winning a league championship in his second season in his role.
After winning a title with Laval, Hartley continued to climb the coaching ladder, taking an assistant coaching job in the AHL with the Cornwall Aces, on the staff of future Jack Adams winner Jacques Martin. Martin left for an NHL role with the Quebec Nordiques after just a year, leaving Hartley as head coach of the Aces.
He won division titles in each of his two years as head coach in Cornwall. The Aces were at the time the affiliate of the Nordiques, who in 1995 relocated to Colorado. The Avalanche let Cornwall go dormant, and switched their hockey operations personnel, including players and coaches, to the Hershey Bears. Hartley won a Calder Cup title in his first season as head coach of the Bears, in 1996-97.
Hartley’s Calder Cup win put him on the path to becoming a future NHL head coach, and he didn’t have to wait too long to get his chance. In 1998, Avalanche head coach Marc Crawford resigned after his team fell in the first round of the playoffs, just two seasons removed from leading the Avalanche to a Stanley Cup. The Avalanche elevated Hartley to the position of head coach, and was an instant success. In his first two campaigns on the job, Hartley defeated Scotty Bowman’s Detroit Red Wings in back-to-back playoffs, but fell to the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference Final in both years.
In his third season, Hartley’s Avalanche won 52 games and won the Stanley Cup, delivering a long-awaited championship to legendary defenseman Ray Bourque. The following year, in 2002, Hartley’s Avalanche fell to the Red Wings in the Western Conference Final. Hartley was fired after 31 games in 2002-03, but didn’t wait long for another job. He was hired by the Atlanta Thrashers that same season. While he had inherited a team capable of contending for Stanley Cups in Colorado, Hartley was dealt the opposite hand in Atlanta, joining a franchise that averaged under 20 wins in its first three seasons.
Hartley was able to make his mark in Atlanta. He guided the franchise through serious off-ice adversity, and under his leadership, the Thrashers entered their strongest period in franchise history. Hartley’s 2006-07 team was the only Thrashers team to reach the playoffs, winning a Southeast Division title with a 43-28-11 record. The following year, he was fired by Atlanta after an 0-6-0 start to their 2007-08 season.
Hartley spent 2011-12 in Switzerland coaching the ZSC Lions, and he had a successful tenure there, winning a National League title. That helped pave the way for what would be Hartley’s final head coaching role in the NHL – a job with the Calgary Flames. Hartley missed the playoffs in three of his four seasons in Calgary, but his 2014-15 campaign stands out as he went 45-30-7 and won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. A year later, he was let go by the Flames. From 2016-17 through 2020-21, Hartley was head coach of Latvia’s national team.
In 2018-19, Hartley became a head coach in the KHL for the first time, and in his time coaching both Avangard Omsk and Lokomotiv, he has been to three Gagarin Cup finals and won the trophy twice. We at PHR would like to extend our best wishes to Hartley in his retirement and congratulate him on an exceptional coaching career.
Photos courtesy of Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Rangers’ Benoit Allaire To Retire After Free Agency
The 2025-26 season will be the last for longtime New York Rangers goalie coach Benoit Allaire, per a team announcement. Allaire will stick around the team through the NHL Draft and start of free agency, per Peter Baugh of The Athletic, before he calls a 29-year career in the NHL to a close.
Allaire has overseen some of the NHL’s top goaltenders as they rose to starting roles. His career began as a goaltending coach with the Montreal Canadiens in 1996. Right away, Allaire was involved in notable NHL careers, working with 20-year-olds Jose Theodore and Tomas Vokoun. Both were overshadowed by a 22-year-old Jocelyn Thibault, who played 61 games of the 1996-97 season.
Theodore and Vokoun went on to play in 647 and 700 games in their NHL careers, respectively, while Allaire jumped to the Phoenix Coyotes for their second season in 1997-98. He joined forces with Nikolai Khabibulin, who was in his third season as Phoenix’s starter. Khabibulin allowed the most goals in the NHL (184) in 1997-98, but, after a year with Allaire, reached a .923 save percentage in 63 games of the 1998-99 season. That mark would stand as the highest in Khabibulin’s 18-year NHL career, though he moved to the Tampa Bay Lightning for the 2000-01 season. Allaire stayed in Phoenix for five more seasons, leaning on Sean Burke to fill the Coyotes’ crease until Brian Boucher moved to Phoenix in 2002-03.
With the Coyotes goalie room stabilized by Boucher, Burke, and Brent Johnson, Allaire moved to the Rangers ahead of the 2005-06 season. It was on Broadway that Allaire would build his legacy. He took over goalie coach duties in Henrik Lundqvist‘s rookie season. Lundqvist finished the year as a Vezina Trophy finalist and fourth in Calder Trophy voting, after recording 30 wins and a .922 save percentage in 53 games.
He was an immediate star who would move through the 2010s as a perennial Vezina candidate with save percentages consistently north of .920. With Lundqvist’s career fading as 2020 approached, Allaire’s attention turned towards finding his next star. That successor would be Igor Shesterkin, who has seamlessly taken over Lundqvist’s spot on annual Vezina ballots. Shesterkin has a career .917 save percentage in 325 games, including a .912 in 51 games this season.
Allaire has molded countless goaltenders into long-term, NHL starters. He also worked with Kevin Weekes, Cam Talbot, Alexandar Georgiev, and Antti Raanta. His name rings loud in NHL circles, and the Rangers will feel the absence of their Director of Goaltending. New York promoted Allaire to a full-time director role in the 2024-25 season.
In the same year, they promoted Hartford Wolf Pack goalie coach Jeff Malcolm to the top flight. Malcolm is a veteran of the Hartford lineup as both a player and a coach – and has spent the last two seasons learning to make up for Allaire’s eventual retirement. He will take the reins moving forward, while the Rangers can rely on Shesterkin, who is signed through the 2032-33 season.
Korbinian Holzer Announces Retirement
According to an announcement from the ICEHL’s Graz99ers, former NHL defenseman Korbinian Holzer has officially hung up his skates. He spent nine years in the NHL playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Anaheim Ducks, and Nashville Predators.
Holzer’s professional career in North America began nearly two decades ago, being selected with the 111th overall pick (fourth round) of the Maple Leafs in the 2006 NHL Draft. Before joining North American ice, Holzer played several seasons with the DEL’s DEG Metro Stars, finishing the 2009-10 season with six goals and 22 points.
Finally making the jump, Holzer spent most of the 2010-11 campaign with the AHL’s Toronto Marlies, registering three goals and 13 points in 73 games with a +10 rating. Still, he managed to debut with the Maple Leafs, earning a -1 rating in two contests.
After spending the 2011-12 season exclusively with the Marlies, Holzer became a more consistent precense on the Maple Leafs’ blue line. Between 2012 and 2015, Holzer appeared in 56 games for Toronto, scoring two goals and nine points, averaging 17:39 of ice time.
Unfortunately, the team that drafted him wasn’t convinced of his staying power. Toronto passed Holzer through waivers ahead of the 2014-15 season, and eventually traded him to the Ducks the following season.
Orange County is where Holzer enjoyed the best seasons of his NHL career. Remaining a seventh defenseman with Anaheim, Holzer spent five years with the Ducks organization, scoring four goals and 18 points in 145 games with a -2 rating, averaging 14:48 of ice time per game. Failing to provide much offense, Holzer was a responsible player in the defensive zone, earning a 92.5% on-ice SV% at even strength while beginning 53.6% of his shifts in the defensive zone.
After a trade to the Predators toward the 2020 trade deadline, Holzer’s career in North America concluded. He has had multiple pit stops since then, playing for the KHL’s Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, the DEL’s Adler Mannheim, before finally concluding his professional career with the Graz99ers.
Over eight years, Holzer scored six goals and 27 points in 206 NHL contests, with another 12 goals and 79 points in 297 AHL appearances. We at PHR congratulate Holzer on his career and wish him the best in his next chapter.
Linus Omark Announces Retirement
The NHL Alumni Association has announced that Linus Omark has officially retired from professional hockey. Omark last played in the NHL during the 2013-14 season with the Buffalo Sabres.
Omark, 39, began his professional career in 2007 when he was selected with the 97th overall pick by the Edmonton Oilers. Despite being a fourth-round selection, Omark’s prospect status began to rise after a pair of quality seasons with the Elitserien’s (SHL) Luleå HF.
Playing on loan with the KHL’s Dynamo Moskva in 2009-10, Omark scored 20 goals and 36 points in 56 games. The next season, the Oilers felt Omark was ready for North American hockey. He played in 28 games for the AHL’s Oklahoma City Barons, scoring 17 goals and 31 points with a +7 rating. That was enough for Omark to earn his NHL debut with Edmonton, finishing the season with five goals and 27 points in 51 games.
It was at this point that Omark was viewed as a true diamond in the rough as the Oilers continued to build an up-and-coming team. This era of hockey in Edmonton coincided with the team adding Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall, and Nail Yakupov with first overall picks, and adding other youngsters such as Magnus Paajarvi and Jordan Eberle.
Unfortunately, that was the last quality season Omark had in North America. Although he had a strong introduction during his rookie season, he struggled to establish himself with the Oilers, frequently being shuffled between the NHL and AHL for several years.
During the shortened 2012-13 season, Omark enjoyed a successful year with the NLA’s EV Zug, scoring 17 and 69 points in 48 games. It was after this successful campaign overseas and continued lack of opportunity in Edmonton that Omark was traded to the Sabres for a conditional sixth-round pick.
Since then, it’s been all overseas for Omark. He finishes his career with eight goals and 32 points in 79 career NHL games, 95 goals and 257 points in 365 games in the SHL, and 106 and 353 points in 401 KHL contests. We at PHR congratulate Omark on his career, particularly in Europe, and wish him the best in his next chapter.
Anze Kopitar Officially Retires After 20 Seasons
April 26th: Kopitar’s career has officially ended following a four-game sweep by the Colorado Avalanche in Round One of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Slovenia-born center finishes his career with 452 goals and 1,316 points in 1,521 regular-season games. He retires first in games played for the Kings, first in assists, first in points, and third in goals. Additionally, Kopitar scored 27 goals and 89 points in 106 career playoff games, helping Los Angeles win two Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014.
Sept. 18th: Kings franchise center Anze Kopitar will retire following the 2025-26 campaign, he said in a press conference Thursday. He confirms what he alluded to last month as he enters the final season of the two-year, $14MM extension he signed in 2023.
It’s a trying day for L.A. sports fans, who also saw MLB’s Dodgers announce future Hall of Fame pitcher Clayton Kershaw will retire at the end of the 2025 campaign. “This will be my last year in the NHL,” Kopitar said. “[My family has] been by my side for 20 years. They now deserve a husband and a dad. I want to get this announcement out of the way now, so it’s not a distraction. I don’t want the attention on me. The moves we made made us better. I can’t wait to start.”
Like his baseball counterpart, Kopitar was a first-round pick by his club and spent his entire career in Los Angeles. The 11th overall pick of the 2005 draft from Sweden’s Södertälje SK wasn’t only the first player from Slovenia to be drafted in the first round, he was the first to even make his NHL debut when he arrived in North America one year later. He hit the ground running in 2006-07, breaking camp with the Kings and immediately stepping in as their top-line center with 61 points in 72 games while seeing north of 20 minutes per game as a rookie. That wasn’t enough to make him a Calder Trophy nominee in a stacked class that included Evgeni Malkin, Paul Stastny, and Jordan Staal, though.
That marked the beginning of what will be a 20-year career, one of the most consistent of its kind. Kopitar continued to flirt with the point per game mark in his second year, making the All-Star Game after tallying 77 points in 82 appearances. He spent a few years struggling to carry the burden of a Kings club that was exiting a rebuild, but after he made the playoffs for the first time in 2010, he finished top 15 in Selke Trophy voting for eight consecutive seasons, cementing himself alongside Patrice Bergeron as the best two-way forward of the 2010s.
While the Kings have had some star power in their lengthy franchise history, Wayne Gretzky notwithstanding, it was Kopitar who first managed to bring the Stanley Cup to Hollywood. The Kings advanced to three straight Western Conference Finals from 2012-14 and ended up converting those into championships on the first and last occasion. During that three-year run, Kopitar’s 188 points in 211 regular-season games ranked 12th in the league, and his +60 rating ranked ninth. No one had more playoff points than Kopitar’s 55 in 64 games during that span.
L.A. had rewarded Kopitar nicely coming off his entry-level deal, giving him a seven-year, $47.6MM commitment following his sophomore season. Before that deal was due to expire in the summer of 2016, the Kings extended him on his big payday – an eight-year, $80MM contract that coincided with him assuming the captaincy from Dustin Brown. While the Kings’ team success dipped in the latter half of the 2010s, that contract saw Kopitar have his career year in 2017-18. He posted a 35-57–92 scoring line in 82 games, remarkably his only time over the point-per-game threshold, with a +21 rating to take home his second Selke Trophy and finishing third in MVP voting, his highest-ever finish for the Hart.
Even as Kopitar enters his age-38 season, he remains an effective top-six center. The slow signs of decline are there, though. His 21 goals and 67 points in 81 games last season tied for his lowest output since 2019, and his usage has ‘dwindled’ to a few ticks under 19 minutes per game. He’s still one of the league’s best faceoff men, winning 57.2% of his draws last year, and has continued to rattle off four consecutive top-10 Selke finishes. One noticeable dropoff is his willingness to deliver and take contact. While never an overtly physical center, he recorded a career-low 31 hits in 2024-25. The tradeoff is durability – he’s only missed four games in the last eight seasons.
Those hoping for Kopitar to be a part of the Kings’ bench or front office next year will be disappointed. He’s planning on moving his family back to Slovenia after the season ends and isn’t leaving the door open to change his mind on retirement, he told Dennis Bernstein of The Fourth Period. Nonetheless, he’ll retire sitting right alongside Gretzky, Marcel Dionne, and Luc Robitaille as the most impactful players in franchise history, and he’s the only one to spend his entire career in California. His 1,278 career points rank second in franchise history behind Dionne’s 1,307, so he’ll end up as the franchise’s all-time leading scorer barring a highly disappointing sendoff campaign. With two Cups, two Selkes, and likely over 1,300 career points when all is said and done, he’s a virtual lock to be inducted into the Hall of Fame when he’s eligible in the class of 2029.
Kopitar now looks to deliver at least a playoff series win in his final season, something the Kings haven’t accomplished since winning the Cup 11 years ago. He’ll do so as his successor as the club’s leading offensive producer, winger Adrian Kempe, is also a pending unrestricted free agent.
All of us at PHR congratulate Kopitar on a spectacular career.
Image courtesy of Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images.
Trevor Lewis Announces Retirement
Two-time Stanley Cup champion Trevor Lewis has announced the end of his playing career. Lewis played 17 seasons and 1,034 games in the NHL between 2008 and 2025, including 14 seasons with the Los Angeles Kings. He filled an important, depth role in the Kings’ race to the 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cups. Lewis also holds the honor of most NHL games played by a Utah-born player.
Lewis’ hockey career began with the USHL’s Des Moines Buccaneers in the 2004-05 season. He quickly stood out as a grinder for the Buccaneers. After a quiet rookie season, he exploded in his draft season of 2005-06. Lewis finished the year with 35 goals and 75 points in 56 games. His ability to bring tempo to his shifts helped Des Moines blaze their way to the 2006 USHL Clark Cup Championship. It also earned Lewis a string of individual awards, including the USHL’s MVP and ‘Gentleman of the Year’ awards, as well as the USA Hockey Player of the Year award.
Even with those accolades, Lewis was ranked as a third-round talent by The Hockey News headed into the 2006 NHL Draft. That low rank didn’t stop the Kings from going out on a limb for Lewis in the first-round. Los Angeles traded away forward Pavol Demitra, fresh off a 62-point first season with the team, to acquire depth winger Patrick O’Sullivan and the 17th overall pick, used to select Lewis.
Lewis was originally committed to the University of Michigan following his draft but decided to sign an entry-level contract with Los Angeles instead. That left him ineligible for college – and prompted to sign with the OHL’s Owen Sound Attack. By location, the Utah-born Lewis was eligible for the WHL, not the OHL – but the CHL Board of Governors decided to allow Lewis to move to the Ontario league. He went on to nearly match his scoring from the prior year, with 73 points in 62 games.
Lewis moved to the AHL at the end of the season and scored six points in his first eight games. His scoring cooled down in his rookie AHL season, but Lewis heated up with his footing under him. He began his second pro season with 19 points in the first 28 games of the AHL season. That prompted the first NHL call-up of his career, a move he rewarded with three points in his first four games. He played two additional scoreless games before being reassigned for the remainder of the season. His 2008-09 season ended with 51 points in 75 AHL games.
A taste of NHL hockey helped Lewis break camp with the Kings for the 2009-10 season. He wound up as a healthy scratch after five scoreless games to start the season and was reassigned to the minors before the calendar turned over. He finished the year with just seven points in 23 AHL games. It was a muted season, but it didn’t knock Lewis off-course. He earned a full-time role with the Kings in the 2010-11 season and quickly settled into a bottom-six role that he would fill for the next 10 seasons.
Lewis’ scoring never flashed too bright. He scored only 20 points across 144 games between 2010 and 2012. Despite that, he seemed to have a knack for showing up in must-win games. Lewis scored four points in six games of the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs, then returned with nine points in 20 games of the Kings’ Cup-winning 2012 run. That scoring included two goals in the Cup-winning Game 6 of the Cup Finals. He combined for 25 points in 121 games across the next two seasons, backed by eight points in 44 playoff games. While again quiet scoring, Lewis did rack up 216 hits in 70 playoff games between 2010 and 2015 – the ninth-most of any NHL skater in that timeframe, and second on the Kings to Dustin Brown‘s league-leading 330 hits.
Lewis proved capable of filling a depth-grinder role on a championship roster twice over during his time with the Kings. His career continued to follow the path of low-scoring, high hit totals, and depth minutes. He scored a career-high 14 goals and 26 points in 68 games of the 2017-18 season, narrowly beating out 25 points scored in the 2014-15 season and 24 points scored in 2016-17. Two years later, the Kings opted to leave Lewis in free agency after 12 seasons with the team. He signed a one-year contract with the Winnipeg Jets after attending training camp on a professional tryout. Lewis turned that deal into 10 points, just two penalty minutes, and a plus-seven in 56 games with Winnipeg.
Lewis was again left in free agency in the following summer and, at the age of 35, decided to sign a one-year deal with the Calgary Flames for the 2021-22 season. That deal reunited Lewis with head coach Darryl Sutter, who led the Kings’ Cup runs. He scored 16 points in 80 games in his first season with the Flames, enough to earn another one-year deal, which he matched with 16 points in 82 games in the 2022-23 season. That year was just the second time that Lewis played every game of the season, joining the 2016-17 season.
The Kings brought Lewis home for the final two seasons of his career. He was slower and less involved than he looked in the prime of his career, but still managed a commendable 28 points in 142 games from a fourth-line role to close things out. Lewis, now 39, did not re-sign for the 2025-26 season and will now move his career forward.
He calls things to a close with the fourth-most hits (1,429), the sixth-most playoff games (86), and the seventh-most regular-season games (816) in the Kings franchise history. His all-three-zones energy and grit are traits teams still search for as they hope to build Cup-winning depth charts. He is a Utah-great and could find the next steps of his career in supporting the burgeoning Utah hockey scene.
Photo courtesy of Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports.
Former Predators’ Winger Andreas Thuresson Retires
A prolific career in international hockey has come to an end for Sweden’s Andreas Thuresson. The 38 year old has announced his retirement per the NHL Alumni Association after five seasons in the AHL, six in the SHL and DEL, and two in the KHL and NHL. Thuresson has played at a professional level for the last 20 years, making his debut in Sweden’s HockeyAllsvenskan in the 2005-06 season.
Thuresson’s breakout came in his second professional season. He scored 15 points in 48 games of the 2006-07 Sweden Elitserien – a predecessor to the SHL – season. That production convinced the Nashville Predators to draft Thuresson in the fifth round of the 2007 NHL Draft. He joined the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals and quickly proved he could fill a nightly role. Thuresson appeared in 151 games and scored 47 points in his first two AHL seasons. With his footing established, Thuresson put together a career-year in the 2009-10 season, marked by routine call-ups to the Predators roster. He finished the year with 33 points in 50 AHL games and three points in the first 22 games of his NHL career. Thuresson played three more NHL games in the 2010-11 season – but with no scoring, his career in North America ended with two more AHL seasons and 59 points in his final 149 games.
Thuresson moved back to the Elitserien to play with Brynas IF in 2012. He scored 19 points in 48 games upon his return, then jumped up to 37 points in 52 games of the 2013-14 season – the year the Elitserien became the SHL. A hot year prompted more exploring outside of Sweden. Thuresson moved to the KHL for the 2014-15 season and split the year between Sibir Novosibirsk and Severstal Cherepovets, combining for 25 points in 47 games. He returned to the SHL for the next two seasons – marked by continued production: 57 points in 93 games – then split the 2017-18 campaign between the KHL’s sole Chinese team, the Kunlun Red Star, and a stint with the National League’s SCL Tigers in Switzerland. Just like his previous KHL season, Thuresson followed the move with another productive return to Sweden – 19 points in 43 games of the 2018-19 SHL season.
On the other side of so many moves, Thuresson sought out a league where he could stick in 2019. He moved to Germany’s DEL – effectively completing a globetrot around the hockey world. Thuresson began what would turn into a five-year career in the DEL with the Schwenninger Wild Wings. He scored 56 points in 66 games, including a team-leading 37 points in 38 games of the 2020-21 season. Thuresson moved to Kolner Haie for the final three seasons of his career. His first season in Kolner was marked by 34 points in 50 games, then Thuresson jumped to a career-high and league-leading 60 points in 51 games of 2022-23. He continued to score in his final year, with 22 points in 28 games – but suffered an injury that would limit both his season and, now, his career.
Thuresson shared that his career came to an unexpectedly-early end, but spanned some of his dreams including playing in the NHL and joining Team Sweden at the 2015 World Championship, in a personal Instragram post announcing his retirement. He was long regarded as a skillful, power-forward who played a team-first game. Pro Hockey Rumors wishes Thuresson luck in his post-playing career.
Jonathan Quick To Retire Following Season
As speculated, tonight will be Jonathan Quick‘s last start of his NHL career. Getting the nod against the Florida Panthers, Quick told reporters (via Vince Z. Mercogliano) that he is retiring after the 2025-26 season.
Quick’s professional career began back in 2005, when he was selected 72nd overall by the Los Angeles Kings. After a pair of quality years at the University of Massachusetts, the Kings felt it was time to bring Quick to the professional level.
Unfortunately, his first season didn’t go as well as he had hoped. He was disappointing in a few games with Los Angeles and spent much of the year split between the AHL’s Manchester Monarchs and ECHL’s Reading Royals.
Still, despite again beginning the year in the AHL, Quick was called up when netminder Erik Ersberg went down with an injury, and never looked back.
Throughout the next decade, Quick became one of the most dominant goalies of his era. From his call-up during the 2008-09 season through the 2017-18 season, Quick won 292 out of 553 games (.528 W%) with a .917 SV% and 2.27 GAA. Although he never won the Vezina Trophy, he took home a pair of William M. Jennings trophies in 2014 and 2018.
Additionally, one cannot bring up Quick’s dominant run in Los Angeles without mentioning his playoff performances. In that same decade, Quick backstopped the Kings to two Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014, winning 46 of 85 games (.541 W%) with a .922 SV% and 2.23 GAA. His performance was impressive during the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, and he was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the postseason’s MVP.
If they hadn’t already, Quick’s performance in 2012 certified that he was the Kings’ goaltender of the future, and they rewarded him with a 10-year, $58MM ($5.8MM AAV) extension.
As it does so often, injuries and age crept up on Quick, and his stability in the crease began to wane during the 2018-19 season. Finishing out his 10-year extension with Los Angeles, Quick found his way to the Vegas Golden Knights after the Kings traded him to Columbus, and the Blue Jackets shipped him to Vegas.
While he didn’t have an integral role with the team, nor did he get his name on the Stanley Cup, Quick won the trophy for the third time with the Golden Knights in 2023. Knowing that his career was coming to an end, Quick signed with the New York Rangers, a team he had grown up idolizing, ahead of the 2023-24 season.
Far removed from being a quality starter, Quick has still managed to be a productive backup for the Rangers. In three years with the club, Quick has managed a 35-29-6 record in 75 games, with a .900 SV% and 2.94 GAA.
Before tonight’s contest, Quick owns a 410-306-90 record throughout his 828-game NHL career. His 410 wins stand as the 12th-most all-time in the NHL, though he won’t have a chance to crack Tony Esposito‘s record with a win tonight. Additionally, his career .910 SV% ranks 59th all-time, just a few points shy of Patrick Roy.
We at PHR congratulate Quick on a Hall of Fame career and wish him the best of luck in his next chapter.
Photo courtesy of Jerry Lai of USA TODAY Sports.