Emil Valentin Andrae (born February 23, 2002) is a Swedish professional

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

defenceman Defence or defense (in American English) in ice hockey is a player position that is primarily responsible for preventing the opposing team from Goal (ice hockey), scoring. They are often referred to as defencemen, D, D-men or blueliners (the la ...

who currently plays for

Lehigh Valley Phantoms The Lehigh Valley Phantoms are a professional ice hockey team based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The team competes in the American Hockey League (AHL) and serves as the primary development team for the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey Lea ...

of the

American Hockey League The American Hockey League (AHL) is a professional ice hockey league based in the United States and Canada that serves as the primary Minor league#Ice hockey, developmental league for the National Hockey League (NHL). Since the 2010–11 AHL se ...

(AHL) as a prospect to the

Philadelphia Flyers The Philadelphia Flyers are a professional ice hockey team based in Philadelphia. The Flyers compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference. The team plays its home games in Wells ...

of the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

(NHL). Andrae was drafted 54th overall by the Flyers in the

2020 NHL Entry Draft The 2020 NHL Entry Draft was the 58th NHL Entry Draft, held from October 6–7, 2020. The draft was originally scheduled for June 26–27, 2020, at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, but was postponed on March 25, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pan ...

Playing career

Born and raised in

Västervik Västervik is a city status in Sweden, city and the seat of Västervik Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden, with 36,747 inhabitants in 2021. Västervik is one of three coastal towns with a notable population size in the province of Småland. Cl ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

, Andrae started to play for the local team

Västerviks IK Västerviks Ishockeyklubb (English: ''Vasterviks Ice hockey club'') – commonly known as Västerviks IK or VIK – is a professional ice hockey team based in Västervik, Sweden. They currently play in the second-highest league in Swedish ice hoc ...

at a very young age. Ahead of the 2017–18 season, Andrae moved to

Oskarshamn Oskarshamn is a coastal city and the seat of Oskarshamn Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden with 17,258 inhabitants in 2010. History Etymology Döderhultsvik was the original name before a town charter was granted in 1856. The name was then chang ...

to play with

IK Oskarshamn IK Oskarshamn is an ice hockey club from Oskarshamn in Sweden. The team plays in the top-tier league, SHL, after succeeding through the 2019 SHL qualifiers and thus earning promotion to the SHL. The 2019–20 season will be the team's first s ...

. Andrae stayed only one season in Oskarshamn before moving to

Jönköping Jönköping (, ) is a city in southern Sweden with 112,766 inhabitants (2022). Jönköping is situated on the southern shore of Sweden's second largest lake, Vättern, in the province of Småland. The city is the seat of Jönköping Municipali ...

to play with

HV71 HV71 (), often referred to as just HV, is a Swedish professional ice hockey club based in Jönköping, playing in the Swedish Hockey League (SHL), the first tier of Swedish ice hockey. The team played in the 2008–09 Champions Hockey League s ...

. Andrae signed his first professional contract with HV71 on March 27, 2020. Following completion of the

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

season with HV71, Andrae was initially signed to a professional tryout contract to join the Flyers AHL affiliate, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, for the remainder of the season. Shortly after making his North American debut with the Phantoms, on 27 March 2023, Andrae was signed to a three-year, entry-level contract with the Philadelphia Flyers to commence in the 2023–24 season.

International play

In 2022, Andrae served as

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

of the bronze medal-winning Swedish team at the World Junior tournament. He was named to the Media All-Star team and tied with

Connor Bedard Connor Bedard (born July 17, 2005) is a Canadian junior ice hockey centre for the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League (WHL). Bedard was selected by the Regina Pats first overall in the WHL Bantam Draft in 2020 as the first WHL player of exc ...

for ninth overall scoring.

Career statistics

Regular season and playoffs

International

References

External links

* 2002 births Living people HV71 players IK Oskarshamn players Lehigh Valley Phantoms players People from Västervik Municipality Philadelphia Flyers draft picks Philadelphia Flyers players Sportspeople from Kalmar County Swedish ice hockey defencemen Västerviks IK players 21st-century Swedish people {{Sweden-icehockey-defenceman-stub