Norwegian club Vålerenga made a couple of key signings on Wednesday, according to the club’s website. Veteran center Mathis Olimb, 39, has re-signed and his younger brother Ken André, a 36-year-old winger who’s played abroad since 2010, has signed a one-year contract.
The pair last played together for their hometown club in 2006-07, when Mathis was 20 and Ken André was 17. The pair also played together for a couple of seasons with Linköping HC in Sweden from 2016 to 2018.
“Getting ‘Kenner’ on the team has been a dream,” said Mathis. “He is both a very good hockey player and a very good person. Definitely the kind of guy we want in Vålerenga.”
“Vålerenga is the team I wanted to return to,” said Ken André. “I have always had a heart for Vålerenga, so it feels like coming home. It was an easy choice.”
The Olimb brothers, who would eventually become mainstays on the Norwegian national team, are from Oslo and both turned pro with Vålerenga before spending the primes of their careers abroad.
Norway Quarter-Century Teams Unveiled: Veterans Zuccarello & Thoresen But What About The Kids?
In the spirit of the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/news/nhl-quarter-century-teams-tracker-each-franchises-best-players-since-2000">NHL announcing quarter-century teams for each of its 30 franchises that have played since 2000</a>, I thought I’d try a similar exercise by country – first and second teams. It’s not limited to NHL performance, although that carries a lot of weight. International play for the country also weighs heavily. To be eligible, a player needn’t have necessarily played for the country at a major tournament, but he had (or has) to be eligible.
Mathias went overseas at age 18 to play junior hockey for the OHL’s London Knights and Sarnia Sting before briefly returning home, then went on to play professionally in Germany with the Augsburger Panther, in the AHL with the Rockford IceHogs – the top farm club of the Chicago Blackhawks – before spending several years in Sweden with Frölunda HC, Linköping and Skellefteå AIK. With Frölunda in 2014-15, he was the Champions Hockey League’s leading scorer and MVP.
After brief stints in the KHL and Switzerland, Mathias then spent a couple of seasons back in Germany with Düsseldorf before returning to Vålerenga in 2021, where he’s played ever since.
While Ken André’s career isn’t as distinguished, he’s still carved out a successful career for himself in Sweden and Germany, where he last played three seasons for the Schwenninger Wild Wings from 2021 to 2024. He sat out the entire 2024-25 season with an injury, but the Vålerenga announcement claims that he’s now healthy and ready to play next season.
Internationally, the pair have played together at numerous IIHF World Championships and at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics.
Mathis Olimb and Patrick Thoresen, 41, are nearly neck-and-neck as Norway’s all-time leading scorers – Thoresen has a three-point lead at the World Championships and Olimb has a two-point lead counting everything. It will be interesting if that changes as Thoresen has already announced that this is his final season playing hockey and will probably appear at the Worlds, as he did last year, whereas Olimb has not played for Norway for the past two seasons.
Patrick Thoresen chooses to play his final season in Sweden
Last month, 40-year-old Patrick Thoresen, captain of the Norwegian national team, <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/international/latest-news/patrick-thoresen-i-will-play-a-maximum-of-one-more-year">said he would play one more season and indicated it would be with either hometown Storhamar in Norway or with famous Swedish club Djurgården</a>, for whom he played several seasons as a young player and had considerable success. Now his decision has been made, and <a href="https://www.sil.no/patrick-til-djurgarden/">the Norwegian club announced Thoresen’s impending departure on its website</a> on Monday.