Swedish coach Christian “Lillen” Yngve, one of the most important coaches in the women’s game during the formative years of its establishment, passed away last Monday after a long illness. He was just 61.
 
Yngve coached the Swedish women from 1989 to 2002, his final year coming at the Salt Lake Olympics when Damkronorna pulled off something of a miracle by winning the bronze medal. Yngve later coached in Austria (2011-13, senior and U18, including the Youth Olympic Games), Spain (2016-18, both senior and U18 level), Hong Kong (2018-19), and the United States, and he also was behind the bench in the SDHL with three teams over the last several seasons.
 
Few people were as beloved by players around the world, and his passing brought a torrent of admiring remarks from those who knew him.

Maria Rooth

“He was a fantastic person with the world's biggest heart,” said Rooth, who played under Yngve for four tournaments, notably the 2002 Olympics. “I had the privilege of having 'Lillen' as a coach at my hockey school for over ten years. In this way, I was able to meet him every year. It's been great to keep in touch and be in his sphere because the girls loved him. He believed in girls and above all he made them believe in themselves. I am eternally grateful to him for taking that time and spending it at my hockey school in Halmstad. He is the one who should have the most credit for the development of women's hockey in Sweden. This is a great loss, and he is already greatly missed. A beloved man who passed away far too soon.”

Lars G. Karlsson

“For me, I miss a very good friend, a person I have had a lot of fine memories with from the Fiskens Hockey school for 15 years, one week every summer. Every time we talked, we made plans, but most important is that we believed that we should be successful in building women’s hockey in Sweden. He was a man who stood up for women’s hockey.”
 
Karlsson’s association with Yngve go back to the very beginning. “When I was asked by the Sport Committee of the Swedish Ice Hockey Association in August 1989 if I wanted to be the head coach for the women’s team in the first Women’s World Championship in Ottawa 1990, and be responsible for building up women’s hockey in Sweden, my answer was yes, and I started to build my team. The first person I contacted was Christian because I knew him as a very dedicated hockey person with a lot of skills that we needed in our mission to build a strong national team and to grow the sport in our country where the attitude was mostly that girls take ice time from boys.”

“We said to ourselves that we could be successful if we gave all players a fair chance to be on the international scene. We needed to set up goals for the players that they had never heard before and that they really believed in. We worked hard between1989-2002 together, and during that time we saw a positive movement in women’s hockey in our country. Christian was a strong person who supported everyone he worked with. He wanted them to be better players on the ice but even more important he wanted them to grow as people and be good on ice and off, as individuals and as teammates. He gave everyone his knowledge but also a bit of his heart.”

“Everyone knows that he was the reason Sweden became successful and started to grow the numbers of players and teams. Every player who was a part of our national team program remember him as kind, smart, fair, and hardworking for women’s hockey, a good friend, a person you can trust. He never gave up. He will always be remembered as one of the pioneers in Swedish women’s hockey history.”

Erika Holst

“I’m very saddened to hear Christian 'Lillen' Yngve passed away. 'Lillen' was my first coach on Team Sweden. He meant a lot to my career. As a 15-year-old, I was going to make my debut on the national team, and we had this big, confident bear who saw what I had in me and gave me the chance. It set a good foundation for me going forward. He dared to trust me and believed in me from the beginning. He was a fantastic person with the world's biggest heart and who always had a joke.”

“'Lillen' was so passionate for hockey, for his teams and for his players. He always did the best out of the resources he had back then, even if that meant picking up players at the airport, having players stay at his place, or making sure players got fed. 'Lillen' did so much in the building of the Swedish women’s hockey program. He has been so important to so many people in Sweden and globally.”

“I still carry his words, 'Nothing is so good you can’t do it better.' I will forever be thankful that I got to know him.”

Ylva Martinsen

“The years 'LG' (Lars G. Karlsson) and Christian Yngve single-handedly ran the women's national team at the time...it cannot be compared to how it is today, but they did it largely voluntarily and with great heart and commitment. The commitment he put in in the 20th century laid the foundation for the success we have today.”
 
"He was involved from the beginning of Damkronorna's history and a big reason for Damkronorna's success. A bigger heart for women's hockey is hard to find," said the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation on their web site.
 
“Christian spent many years in the DMV impacting the lives of hundreds of local players and coaches and will be dearly missed,” the Washington Pride posted on X, formerly Twitter.
 
Indeed, he spent nine years in Washington, with their youth hockey program and the Washington Pride team. In 2008-09, Yngve was an assistant coach with the Pride, an elite-level girls youth hockey team that toured the U.S. and Canada six months out of the year, and he was head coach of the U16 Montgomery Blue Devils. On that team was Haley Skarupa, whom Yngve discovered at a development camp in Nashville and who went on to have a fine career with the U.S. national women’s team, winning gold at the 2018 Olympics.
 
This past season, Yngve started as coach for the AIK women’s team but was forced to quit this past summer because illness. He is no longer with us, but his impact has been felt by hundreds of women across the hockey universe, and his influence will never be forgotten.