Chris Nieves/Rockford Register/USA Today Network
It’s about time.
Twenty five years after Alpo Suhonen became the first Finnish-born head coach, the NHL finally has its first Swedish-born head coach.
Anders Sorensen, who has coached William Nylander from the age of seven and spent four years coaching in the AHL, was hired to replace Luke Richardson on Thursday.
Sorensen’s primary goal is to get a slumping center Connor Bedard to build upon the Calder Trophy-winning season he had as a rookie. But ultimately, his biggest task is to show the NHL that Europe is an untapped market when it comes to coaches.
As longtime Swedish national coach Rickard Gronberg told me back in 2016, when he was vying for an NHL job: “If you want to take the next step as an organization, you have to look outside the box. Maybe they have to look over here.”
For a while, no one was looking to Europe. Not many were looking past the same group of recycled names when filling jobs behind the bench. The coaching world is a small one and filled with second, third and even fourth chances. If you get fired, chances are that you would be re-hired soon enough.
Related: Chicago Blackhawks Fire Coach Luke Richardson
That is what happened with Bruce Cassidy, who was hired by Vegas eight days after being let go by Boston in 2022. Jim Montgomery, who was fired by Boston last month, spent five days unemployed before St. Louis hired him.
Meanwhile, there is a whole world of coaches patiently waiting for a chance over in Europe. Sure, there are plenty of European-born assistant coaches in the NHL, such as Ulf Samuelsson (Florida Panthers) and Tommy Albelin (New York Islanders). And there are several other head coaches in the AHL, like Sorensen and Marco Sturm (Ontario Reign).
But for the longest time, no NHL GM has been willing to hand over the team to someone born outside of North America.
Until now, that is.
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So, good on the Blackhawks for trying something different. And Sorensen is definitely different.
Though he was born in Sweden, Sorensen played defense for minor pro teams in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, and got his coaching start in Chicago while overseeing the early development of a seven-year-old William Nylander — Sorensen is close friends with Nylander’s father, Michael — as well as future NHLers Christian Dvorak and Nick Schmaltz.
For years, wherever Michael Nylander was playing pro hockey, Sorensen followed, basically acting as the personal coach to William and his brother, Alex. When Michael Nylander went back home to play in Sweden, his family followed. So, too, did Sorensen, who became the director of player development with Sodertalje.
“Anders is a very, very special guy and he’s really knowledgeable,” Michael Nylander said in the the book, The Next Ones: How McDavid, Matthews and a Group of Young Guns Took Over the NHL. “Of course, when your kids have a coach like that around when they’re so young, it’s a unique opportunity. He’s done so well with my boys.”
Like Nylander, who grew up a hockey nomad because of his journeyman father, Sorensen is also a hybrid of sorts. Because he spent so many years in the United States, he is not quite your stereotypical European coach. But anyone who has watched Sorensen’s teams play know he’s far from what you typically see in the rinks in North America.
It was Sorensen who encouraged Nylander to tap into his “Swedish roots” and hang onto the puck rather than play the North American dump-and-chase. It was the why he coached all of his players to play, no matter where they were born. He wanted Nylander and Dvorak and Schmaltz to control the pace and slow the game down, even if it meant reversing back into your own end.
Ultimately, he wants skilled players to rely on their skill. That should make Bedard, who has just five goals and 19 points this season, very happy. Think of Sorensen as a Swedish version of Don Granato, who was instrumental in the development of Buffalo’s Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson and Owen Power.
Whether that means Sorensen will be just an interim coach for this season, before the Blackhawks go with someone more familiar and more North American, is yet to be seen. But for now, Chicago has bucked the trend and is trying something different.
Based on how it goes, don’t be surprised if Sorensen is the first of many European head coaches to finally get a shot.
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