{"id":144922,"date":"2025-08-14T11:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T11:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/144922\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T11:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T11:16:13","slug":"patrick-thoresen-announces-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/144922\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Thoresen Announces Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Edmonton Oilers forward Patrick Thoresen<\/a><\/strong> has announced his retirement from professional hockey, via a social media post from the SHL\u2019s Djurg\u00e5rdens IF<\/a>. Thoresen has spent the last 17 years marching around European pro leagues. He has played with teams in four different countries, and eight different leagues, in that span. Now, after winning a HockeyAllsvenskan championship with Djurg\u00e5rdens last season, the 41-year-old left-winger has decided to hang up his skates.<\/p>\n

Thoresen\u2019s history in the NHL is rather brief. He went undrafted through eligibility in the 2002, 2003, and 2004 NHL Drafts \u2013 falling through a combined 27 rounds in the old nine-round format \u2013 despite recording a combined 191 points in 131 QMJHL games during his draft-eligible years. Thoresen returned to Europe for in the 2003-04 season and quickly stood out as a pro. He scored 41 points in 38 games in Sweden\u2019s top minor league, then continued to produce for Djurg\u00e5rdens in the SHL (then the SEL) with a combined 50 points in 80 games over the next two seasons.<\/p>\n

The strong performances in Sweden were enough to catch the eye of the Edmonton Oilers, who signed Thorsen to his first NHL contract in May of 2006. He was a major standout during the team\u2019s 2006-07 training camp and earned a spot on the opening night roster. But he struggled to maintain the momentum into his first NHL season, and recorded just 16 points and 52 penalty minutes in 68 games of his rookie season. He returned to Edmonton in the next year, but was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers mid-season after scoring just three points in 17 games with the Oilers. He added five more points in 21 games with the Flyers \u2013 a slowdown that seemed to clearly paint a mismatch between Thoresen\u2019s style and the NHL. His action with the Oilers and Flyers was intercut by 34 games and 32 points in the AHL.<\/p>\n

With two years of struggles behind him, Thoresen opted to return to Europe via a move to Lugano of the Swiss National League in 2008. He instantly bounced back to form, recording 63 points and 48 games of the 2008-09 season, then signing with the KHL\u2019s Ufa Salavat in the following summer. Thoresen maintained his point-per-game scoring in Russia, and served as a crucial piece of Ufa\u2019s run to the league championship in 2011 \u2013 the most recent title-win in club history. He moved to SKA following his championship run, continued to score, and eventually led SKA to their own championship run in 2015. In total, Thoresen managed 358 points in 375 games in the KHL between 2009 and 2015.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The next three seasons were spent in one-year stops with Djurg\u00e5rdens, Zurich SC, and SKA \u2013 before Thoresen opted to become the face of the Norwegian league in 2018. He continued on through various levels of Norwegian pros until this past season, when he returned to Djurg\u00e5rdens to support their surge back to the SHL. With 41 points in 48 games from Thoresen, Djurg\u00e5rdens was able to lean on a long-time veteran in their push to a league promotion.<\/p>\n

Thoresen was a fixture of Norway\u2019s Men\u2019s roster from 2003 to 2025. He appeared with the team in every year, even through international moves, and has served as one of the club\u2019s captains since 2012. Like he did in every league he played in, Thoresen emerged as a star scorer for the Norway squad, and even recorded five points in three games of this year\u2019s Olympic Games Qualifiers, at the age of 40. He retires as Norway\u2019s leader in goals (47) and points-per-game (0.98) through 131 international games.<\/p>\n

Thoresen will hang his skates up with a strong bid for being the greatest Norwegian pro of all time. His accomplishments spanned borders, and include two championships in the KHL, two in Norway, one in the HockeyAllsvenskan, and a former SHL MVP award. While he\u2019ll move on from his playing career, it\u2019s hard to imagine a veteran of more than 20 pro seasons will stay away for long.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Edmonton Oilers forward Patrick Thoresen has announced his retirement from professional hockey, via a social media post…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[85917,21619,293,85916,700,80192,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-144922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockeyallsvenskan","9":"tag-khl","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-patrick-thoresen","12":"tag-retirement","13":"tag-shl","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115026839741645817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}