Mike Radja (born March 7, 1985) is an American 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 h ...

forward who is currently a free agent. Radja previously played for Anyang Halla of the Asia League Ice Hockey. In Europe, he played for

HC TPS TPS or Turun Palloseura is an ice hockey team and 10-time champion of SM-liiga and 1-time champion of SM-sarja. They play in Turku, Finland, at Gatorade Center. In terms of championships, TPS is the second all-time most successful team in SM-L ...

in the

Liiga The SM-liiga (marketed as just Liiga from 2013 on), (Finnish for ''League'') colloquially called the Finnish Elite League in English or FM-ligan in Swedish, is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. It is one of the six founding lea ...

Augsburger Panther The Augsburger Panther are a professional ice hockey team in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga. The team is based in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. They play their home games at the Curt Frenzel Stadion. Founded in 1878, the team's name was Augsburger EV ...

in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga and the

Belfast Giants The Belfast Giants (known officially as the Stena Line Belfast Giants due to sponsorship) are a professional ice hockey team based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They compete in the UK's Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL) and are the current cha ...

in the

Elite Ice Hockey League The Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL), sometimes referred to as the British Elite League or, for sponsorship reasons, the Viaplay Elite League, is an ice hockey league in the United Kingdom. Formed in 2003 following the demise of the Ice Hockey ...

Playing career

Radja was raised in

Yorkville, Illinois Yorkville (officially the United City of Yorkville) is a city and county seat of Kendall County, Illinois, United States. The population was 21,533 at th2020 census History In 1836, the city of Yorkville was settled by early pioneers. Origi ...

and graduated from

Yorkville High School Yorkville High School, or YHS, is a public high school located in Yorkville, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, in the United States. It serves grades 9-12 for the Yorkville Community Unit School District 115. The school serves Yorkville, Bris ...

in 2003. Radja played two seasons of junior hockey for the

Waterloo Black Hawks The Waterloo Black Hawks are a Tier I junior ice hockey team playing in the Western Conference of the United States Hockey League (USHL) under president and general manager P.K. O'Handley. The Black Hawks' home ice is the Young Arena in Waterl ...

of the

USHL The United States Hockey League (USHL) is the top junior ice hockey league sanctioned by USA Hockey. The league consists of 16 active teams located in the midwestern United States, for players between the ages of 16 and 21. The USHL is strictly ...

. While at Waterloo Radja played with his future University of New Hampshire teammate Kevin Regan. Radja scored a key goal in the game which clinched the Black Hawks' victory in the 2004 Clark Cup. He attended the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, m ...

from 2004 to 2008. In December 2006 he suffered a knee injury which caused him to miss a month of play. He made a quick recovery, however. In 2008 he was suspended for two games after an incident in which he was briefly detained by police while visiting T. J. Oshie after a game against

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, So ...

. That season proved to be a successful one for Radja, he was selected for the

Hockey East The Hockey East Association, also known as Hockey East, is a college ice hockey conference which operates entirely in New England. It participates in the NCAA's Division I as a hockey-only conference. Hockey East came into existence in 1984 for ...

All Star team and was the National College Hockey Player of the month in February 2008. After leaving UNH, he briefly played for the Syracuse Crunch of the AHL at the end of 2007–08 season. The next year he played in eight games with the

Fresno Falcons The Fresno Falcons were a minor league hockey team. They were charter members of several long standing leagues in the western United States including the Pacific Southwest Hockey League and the West Coast Hockey League. In their final years, the ...

of the

ECHL The ECHL (formerly the East Coast Hockey League) is a mid-level professional ice hockey league based in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, with teams scattered across the United States and Canada. It is a tier below the American Hockey League (AHL). The ...

before spending most of the season with the

Rockford IceHogs The Rockford IceHogs are a professional ice hockey team based in Rockford, Illinois. They are members of the American Hockey League (AHL), having begun play in the League starting in the 2007–08 season. The team plays their home games at the ...

of the AHL. In the 2009–10 season Radja played in twenty five games in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

with TPS of the

SM-liiga The SM-liiga (marketed as just Liiga from 2013 on), (Finnish for ''League'') colloquially called the Finnish Elite League in English or FM-ligan in Swedish, is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. It is one of the six founding leagu ...

before returning to North America to play for the Syracuse Crunch and

Bridgeport Sound Tigers The Bridgeport Islanders (previously known as the Bridgeport Sound Tigers) are a professional ice hockey team playing in the American Hockey League (AHL). They are the AHL affiliate of the National Hockey League's New York Islanders, who own the f ...

in the AHL. The next year Radja returned to Europe to play for the Augsburger Panther of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga. On January 13, 2012 Radja signed with the Houston Aeros 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 developmental league for the National Hockey League (NHL). Since the 2010–11 season, every team in the le ...

. After four seasons abroad, Radja opted to continue his professional career back in North America, signing a one-year ECHL contract in a return with the Elmira Jackals on August 4, 2016.

Career statistics

Awards and honors

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Radja, Mike 1985 births American men's ice hockey forwards HL Anyang players Augsburger Panther players Belfast Giants players Binghamton Senators players Bridgeport Sound Tigers players Elmira Jackals (ECHL) players Fresno Falcons players High1 players Houston Aeros (1994–2013) players Ice hockey players from Illinois Living people New Hampshire Wildcats men's ice hockey players Nippon Paper Cranes players People from Yorkville, Illinois Peoria Rivermen (AHL) players Rockford IceHogs (AHL) players Syracuse Crunch players HC TPS players University of New Hampshire alumni Waterloo Black Hawks players AHCA Division I men's ice hockey All-Americans American expatriate ice hockey players in Finland American expatriate ice hockey players in Germany American expatriate ice hockey players in Japan American expatriate ice hockey players in South Korea American expatriate ice hockey players in Northern Ireland