HC Vita Hästen is a Swedish

hockey ''Hockey'' is a family of List of stick sports, stick sports where two opposing teams use hockey sticks to propel a ball or disk into a goal. There are many types of hockey, and the individual sports vary in rules, numbers of players, apparel, ...

club, based in

Norrköping Norrköping ( , ) is a city in the province of Östergötland in eastern Sweden and the seat of Norrköping Municipality, Östergötland County, about 160 km southwest of the national capital Stockholm, 40 km east of county seat Lin ...

, which was founded following the bankruptcy of a previous club called IK Vita Hästen. The team plays in HockeyTrean, the fifth tier of the Swedish ice hockey system, as of the 2023–24 season. The current team was founded as Norrköping Hockey immediately following the bankruptcy of the previous club. Norrköping Hockey soon merged with Skärblacka IF to form NSH-96, which soon thereafter took the name Hästen Hockey. Years later, in 2007, the club retook the name "Vita Hästen", but were required by the league to use "HC Vita Hästen" rather than "IK Vita Hästen" to avoid confusion with the first incarnation of "Vita Hästen". The name "Vita Hästen" literally translates to " heWhite Horse". The previous club, IK Vita Hästen, was a merger in 1967 of the ice hockey sections of rivaling teams

IFK Norrköping Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna Norrköping, more commonly known as IFK Norrköping or simply Norrköping, is a Swedish professional association football, football club based in Norrköping. The club is affiliated to Östergötlands Fotbollför ...

and

IK Sleipner Idrottsklubben Sleipner is a sports club in Norrköping, Sweden; the main sports are football and ten-pin bowling. It was founded in 1903, and named after the deity Odin's horse Sleipnir from Norse mythology. Currently, the club's senior men's t ...

. The merged club was formally called "IF IFK/IKS" but mostly referred to simply as "Norrköping" in the league tables in newspapers and such. However, since IFK Norrköping played in white jerseys and Sleipner was the name of a horse ( Norse god

Odin Odin (; from ) is a widely revered god in Norse mythology and Germanic paganism. Most surviving information on Odin comes from Norse mythology, but he figures prominently in the recorded history of Northern Europe. This includes the Roman Em ...

's horse), the team soon got the nickname "vita hästen", i e "the white horse". By 1973, this name was so commonly used that it was chosen as the actual club name. Former Detroit Redwings Defensemen Jonathan Ericsson played a season for HC Vita Hasten in the 2001-2002 season.

Season-by-season

References

External links

* Sports clubs and teams in Norrköping Ice hockey clubs established in 1996 Ice hockey teams in Östergötland County 1996 establishments in Sweden 20th-century establishments in Östergötland County {{icehockey-stub