Patrick Thoresen, the captain of the Norwegian national team, will turn 41 in November. In an interview with Swedish website HockeyNews.se, he said that where he would play the 2024-25 season was down to two teams.

“I will play a maximum of one more year, either in Storhamar or Djurgården. Otherwise, I'll quit,” he said plainly.

Storhamar is Thoresen’s maternal club, with whom he reached Norway’s top league at age 16 in 1999. That’s where he’s played almost all of the past seven seasons and it would seem like a fitting place to end his career. However, there’s a club in Sweden that’s close to his heart as well.

“Djurgården is the club that has made me the hockey player I am,” he said.

Thoresen went to Sweden at age 19 after two years of junior hockey in the QMJHL – first with the Moncton Wildcats and then the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, where he recorded 118 points in 83 regular-season and playoff games.

His 152 career SHL games, spread out over four seasons, have all been with Stockholm-based Djurgården. Following a nine-year stretch where he played abroad in North America, Austria, Switzerland and Russia, he returned to Djurgården in 2015-16, put up 57 points in 57 games and was named SHL MVP.

There have been reports of an offer on the table for Thoresen. However, he said, “I haven't received an offer from Djurgården, but I'm going to the Pink concert in Stockholm at the end of July and then (Djurgården president Niklas Wikegård) and I will go for a coffee.”

While in North America, Thoresen played 120 NHL games with the Edmonton Oilers and Philadelphia Flyers between 2006 and 2008, recording 26 points.

Internationally, he has represented Norway at 10 elite-level IIHF World Championships and at the 2010, 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics. He was Norway’s captain at this year’s Worlds in Prague, where he recorded six points in seven games playing on an interesting line that included veteran Mats Zuccarello and 18-year-old Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, who was a first-round draft pick of the Detroit Red Wings a couple of weeks ago.

“The fun part is I played with Michael’s dad when I got into the national team and I played with him for three or four years,” Thoresen said during the tournament, referring to Kjell Richard Nygård, who played for Norway at seven World Championships between 2001 and 2008. “He was watching from the stands today. There are six or seven guys here whose dads I played with. That’s how old I am.”

In the HockeyNews.se article, Thoresen didn’t mention the possibility of playing in one last World Championship, which will be in Sweden and Denmark, with Norway playing in the group in Herning, Denmark.