Malmö Redhawks
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Malmö Redhawks (colloquially referred to simply as Malmö or by past abbreviation MIF) are a Swedish professional
ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...
team based in
Malmö Malmö is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, sixth-largest city in Nordic countries, the Nordic region. Located on ...
which plays in the SHL, with
Malmö Arena Malmö Arena is a multi-purpose List of indoor arenas, indoor arena in Malmö, Sweden, and the venue for home games of Swedish Hockey League, SHL ice hockey team Malmö Redhawks. It is the largest arena in the SHL, and the List of indoor arenas ...
as the venue for home games. The history of the team dates back to 1944 as the ice hockey division of the now exclusively
football club In association football, a football club (or association football club, alternatively soccer club) is a sports club that acts as an entity through which association football teams organise their sporting activities. The club can exist either as ...
Malmö FF Malmö Fotbollförening (), commonly known simply as Malmö FF or MFF, is a Swedish professional football club based in Malmö, Scania. They compete in the Allsvenskan, the top division of Swedish football, and play home matches at the Eleda S ...
. In 1972 the team divested from Malmö FF, marking the start of the hockey association initially known as Malmö IF. The team name was changed to MIF Redhawks in 2001 and then to the present name IF Malmö Redhawks in 2004. Officially the team goes by the name ''Ishockeyföreningen Malmö Redhawks'' (''Ice Hockey Association Malmö Redhawks''). The current CEO is Patrik Sylvegård who represented the team during his senior playing career.


History

The team was inaugurated on 28 February 1972 as Malmö Ishockeyförening (''Malmö Ice Hockey Association'', or MIF) when the ice hockey division of Malmö FF was transitioned into an independent association. The early history of the team was spent in the lower divisions of Swedish hockey. Relegation to Division 2 in 1984 became the spark to a series of events including the departure of Nils Yngvesson who had been chairman of the association since its creation in 1972. The team only played one season in Division 2 before being promoted back to Division 1, where Malmö IF made what it referred to as "the biggest investment in Swedish sports history." The team's campaign to reach the top league failed that season, but in the 1989–90 season, the team finished first in both their autumn Division 1 group, as well as the Allsvenskan in the spring, and then won the Allsvenskan final 3–0 in games against MoDo to secure promotion to Elitserien (today called the SHL) for the first time. They would remain in the top flight for 15 seasons, a period that would bring two name changes (to MIF Redhawks in 1996 and to IF Malmö Redhawks in 2003), as well as two Swedish Championship titles, in 1992 and 1994, and the 1992–93 European championship.


Mid 2000's downturn

At the end of the 2004–05 season, the Redhawks participated in the qualification series to stay in Elitserien, where they did not manage to secure one of the spots for staying up, and were relegated. Thus, as of the 2005–06 season, they played in the
HockeyAllsvenskan HockeyAllsvenskan (previously Allsvenskan and SuperAllsvenskan) is a professional ice hockey sports league, league, and the second-highest league in the Swedish ice hockey system, after the Swedish Hockey League, SHL. Since the 2009–10 season, t ...
, the second division hockey league in
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
; at the end of the season, the top four teams played the qualification series with the bottom two teams of Elitserien. Malmö won the qualification round and played in Elitserien during the 2006–07 season. In 2007, the Malmö Redhawks participated in a qualification series ( Kvalserien) consisting of the top four teams of HockeyAllsvenskan and the bottom two teams from Elitserien, having finished 12th in the 2006–07 Elitserien season. Malmö were considered favourites alongside the second team from Elitserien,
Skellefteå AIK Skellefteå AIK is a Swedish professional ice hockey club from Skellefteå. They currently play In the Swedish Hockey League. They play their home games in Skellefteå Kraft Arena, which seats 6,001 spectators. The team has won the Swedish Ch ...
, but failed to re-qualify for Elitserien, falling two points behind Södertälje SK. In 2008 the team once again managed to reach Kvalserien, and had a golden opportunity to advance to Elitserien, leading the series for a majority of rounds. The Redhawks, however, lost in overtime of the final round while their arch rivals,
Rögle BK Rögle BK (Rögle Bandyklubb) is a Swedish professional ice hockey club from Ängelholm that has been playing in the SHL since the 2015–16 season. Rögle has previously played in the SHL (previously named Elitserien) in 1992–1996, 2008–20 ...
, claimed the Elitserien spot with a margin of two points by scoring twice in the last minute of play. The Redhawks only managed to get 2 points in the 2008 Kvalserien last four rounds, despite having gotten 15 points after the first six games.


New arena and financial issues

During the 2008–09 season, the Redhawks moved to the newly inaugurated Malmö Arena, a state-of-the-art sports and entertainment venue, located in
Hyllie Hyllie () is an area and former city district () in the central of Malmö Municipality, Sweden. On 1 July 2013, it was merged with Limhamn-Bunkeflo, forming Väster. In 2012, Hyllie had a population of 32,998 of the municipality's 307,758. T ...
in the southern parts of
Malmö Malmö is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, sixth-largest city in Nordic countries, the Nordic region. Located on ...
. On 29 January 2009, while still playing in HockeyAllsvenskan, the team released all its contracted players due to financial debt and in order to avoid bankruptcy. The players were made free to find and sign with other teams. By then the Redhawks were ranked 10th in the league with only one month of games remaining to play, instead of the top three or seven required for Kvalserien and possible Elitserien qualification. The team finished 8th and thus missed the playoffs, although the team was just one point short from reaching the playoffs.


Failures to reach Kvalserien and started efforts

Malmö finished fifth in HockeyAllsvenskan in the 2009–10 season and thus reached the playoffs, which was an improvement over last season. The Redhawks started the playoffs by knocking out Bofors IK in two straight games, and the Redhawks were now set to face Almtuna IS for a series that would decide which team would be HockeyAllsvenskan's fourth one in Kvalserien. The Redhawks beat Almtuna 2–1 at home in the first game, but lost the two following games (which the Redhawks played on away ice) and thus were eliminated from the playoffs. In the 2010–11 season, things went worse as the Redhawks failed to reach the playoffs, finishing 8th and four points short from a playoff spot. On 28 January 2011, during the 2010–11 season, the Redhawks announced that they had agreed to a 3-year 70-million SEK ($10.6 million
USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it int ...
) deal with investor Hugo Stenbeck. The intention with the deal was to get Malmö Redhawks back to Elitserien. Malmö's efforts to reach Elitserien started immediately prior to the 2011–12 season. Several players from higher divisions, including Hannu Toivonen, Daniel Josefsson, J. D. Forrest, Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre and Linus Klasen, joined the team. When Linus Klasen joined the team on 17 May 2011, he was immediately appointed the team's
captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...
. Linus Klasen's three-year contract included an annual salary of 4 million SEK (US$0.6 million), which made Klasen the best paid ice hockey player in Sweden at that time. The season started well with a top-three spot in the league after a couple of months, but after falling down to sixth place with 47 points, at that time 10 points away from the third Kvalserien spot, Redhawks then-head coach Leif Strömberg was fired on 10 December 2011. He was replaced by the team's then-assistant coach Ulf Taavola. Patrik Sylvegård was acquired as the team's new assistant coach. After continuing to struggle throughout January, the Malmö Redhawks improved in February, and managed a seventh-place finish in the league, which was enough for a playoff spot. In the Playoff round, Malmö finished second due to inferior
goal difference Goal difference, goal differential or points difference is a form of tiebreaker used to rank sport teams which finish on equal points in a league competition. Either "goal difference" or "points difference" is used, depending on whether matches ar ...
than Rögle BK, and did not qualify the 2012 Kvalserien.


Reconstruction

In early 2012, Malmö Redhawks stated that the financial situation needed to be reviewed, after Hugo Stenbeck had withdrawn from the organisation. They filed for
economic reconstruction Economic reconstruction is a process for creating a proactive vision of economic change. The most basic idea is that problems in the economy, such as deindustrialization, environmental decay, outsourcing, industrial incompetence, poverty and a ...
on 11 April 2012. The filing was granted the following day. The team re-negotiated the most expensive player contracts in order to reduce the total squad salary from 30 million SEK to 18 million. On 17 May 2012 it was announced that Malmö Redhawks and Hugo Stenbeck had agreed that Stenbeck would help buy out Linus Klasen and Hannu Toivonen due to their expensive contracts. After the 2011–12 season, Patrik Sylvegård was appointed CEO and sports director, and Redhawks profile Mats Lusth was acquired as the new assistant coach. A Sports Committee was also created, which includes people with strong connection to Malmö Redhawks. Ulf Taavola continued as head coach like the previous season when he took over Leif Strömberg. Malmö Redhawks had to sign a lot of new players. The players who remained from last season were Pontus Sjögren, Emil Carnestad, Stefan Lassen, Alexander Ribbenstrand, Robin Alvarez, Lukas Eriksson, Magnus Häggström, Tomas Kollar and
Roger Olsson Roger Olsson (30 January 1944 – 4 July 2024) was a Swedish ice hockey center and Olympian. Olsson played all seven matches with Team Sweden at the 1968 Winter Olympics and scored one goal. He previously played for VIK Västerås HK and Fr ...
. The Malmö Redhawks started the 2012–13 season in poor fashion and after 17 games played, the team had only taken 21 points, which was far from even a playoff spot towards Kvalserien. Eventually, the team began a massive boost, which went through the month of November without a single loss after regulation time, and took a total of 24 out of 27 points that month. As a result of the great effort in November, the Redhawks were located in fifth place in the league by early December. In January, the team began a losing streak and lost eight games in a row. The team finished in ninth place, which was the worst placing the team had since the large investments during the late 1980s. In Malmö, the season was over on March 2, when the regular season was finished. Having won the 2013–14 HockeyAllsvenskan the year after they fell just short of qualifying for the first tier with a 4th place finish and 15 points in the 2014 Kvalserien.


SHL comeback

This was Malmö's eighth consecutive season in HockeyAllsvenskan, which is the second-highest league in Sweden. In the regular-season from 11 September 2014 to 26 February 2015 Malmö finished in third place which meant they qualified for 2015 Slutsspelsserien against Leksands IF. Coming into game seven it was tied 3-3 and the game was played on Leksand's arena Tegera Arena, after a hard-fought game Malmö Redhawks won 4-2 with one goal being with empty net. Winning against Leksands IF meant that Malmö now played in SHL. Since the comeback to the top flight, the team has managed to reach the semi-final in
2017 2017 was designated as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by the United Nations General Assembly. Events January * January 1 – Istanbul nightclub shooting: A gunman dressed as Santa Claus opens fire at the ...
and
2018 Events January * January 1 – Bulgaria takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Estonian presidency. * January 4 – SPLM-IO rebels loyal to Chan Garang Lual start a raid against Juba, capital of ...
, and an additional quarter final in
2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...
.


Season-by-season record

''This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Redhawks. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Malmö Redhawks seasons'' ''Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, OTL = Overtime Losses, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against''


Players and personnel


Current roster

Last updated on 16 August 2024


Honored members


Notable alumni

* Philip Falcone * Peter Andersson * Róbert Švehla * Richard Park * Raimo Helminen * Mats Näslund * Mats Hallin * Fedor Fedorov * Peter Hammarström * Andreas Lilja * Kim Johnsson * Juha Riihijärvi * Daniel Rydmark * Jani Hurme * Tomas Sandström * Gustav Nyquist * Carl Söderberg * Martin Fehérváry * Rasmus Andersson * André Burakovsky


Trophies and awards


Team

* Le Mat Trophy (2): 1992, 1994 *
European Cup The UEFA Champions League (UCL) is an annual club association football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that is contested by top-division European clubs. The competition begins with a round robi ...
(1): 1992


See also

* Ice hockey in Sweden


Notes


References


External links

*
Redhawks Support
– official supporter club site {{DEFAULTSORT:Malmo Redhawks Swedish Hockey League teams Sports organizations established in 1972 1972 establishments in Sweden Ice hockey in Malmö Ice hockey teams in Skåne County Sports clubs and teams in Malmö 1970s establishments in Malmöhus County