The IIHF’s Historical Committee has decided on this year’s recipients of its Contributors’ Awards in conjunction with the IIHF Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony for 2025.
Norway’s Jon Haukeland will receive the Paul Loicq Award for his contributions to international hockey. The Richard “Bibi” Torriani Award goes to Leszek Laskiewicz of Poland. And, for the first time, there will be two honourees for the Milestone Award—the 2002/03 Danish men’s national team, and the two Swedish men’s teams from 2006 that won gold at the Olympics and World Championship.
The IIHF Media Award goes to Paul Graham of TSN, and the Johan Bollue Award will be presented to Jim Aldred.
The Contributors’ Awards ceremony will take place on Saturday, 24 May 2025 prior to the semi-finals games of the Men’s World Championship in Stockholm, Sweden.
Haukeland, 71, has been working for the Norwegian Ice Hockey Association since 1982 in a variety of capacities. He was the NIHA’s first Sport Director and later served as General Secretary. He has been heavily involved in programs focused on player development, and most recently he has worked as a senior advisor and national team organizer. He has also worked as a team leader and general manager for teams in Olympic and IIHF competition and has served on several IIHF committees continuously from 1998 to 2016.
Laskiewicz played for nearly a quarter century both in leagues across Europe as well as for the Polish national team. He played in consecutive U20 championships in 1997 and 1998, and at the senior level he represented Poland at an astounding 18 Men’s World Championships at various levels. At the top level, he played at the World Junior Championship in 1997 and the Men’s World Championship in 2002.
Denmark’s men’s national team languished in the lower pools and divisions for more than half a century. Most famously, they lost to Canada 47-0 at the 1949 Worlds, their first, last, and only top-level event of the 20th century. But, finally, in 2002, the team finished first in Division I-B to earn promotion to the top level for 2003, and then they did what many thought was impossible—they stayed up. Indeed, the Danes have remained in the top pool ever since, and their program has improved and developed an ever-greater number of world-class players as a result.
The Swedes got a goal early in the third period of the 2006 Olympic gold-medal game against Finland and held on for a 3-2 victory. It was their first Olympic gold since 1994, and Tre Kronor then did something no country had done previously. A few weeks later, in Riga, they won Men’s World Championship gold. Some eight players were on both teams—Mika Hannula, Jorgen Jonsson, Kenny Jonsson, Niklas Kronwall, Stefan Liv, Mikael Samuelsson, Ronnie Sundin, Henrik Zetterberg.
Aldred’s journey to the Bollue Award started in Toronto, where was born, and flourished in Portugal, where his contributions have made him an ideal recipient for the IIHF’s newest honour. He married a Portuguese woman and moved to that country without a job in hockey. But the Canadian in his bones pushed him to look for just such opportunities in a land where hockey was on the fringes of sporting interest. Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before he was hired as Portugal’s national team coach, in 2017. Very soon after, he was behind the bench for Portugal’s first ever international event, the Development Cup, in Andorra. Portugal has been involved in every Development Cup since, and Aldred’s place behind the bench has been equally consistent.