Greg Thomson

Greg Thomson

Date of birth	May 28, 1963
place of birth	Edmonton , Alberta , Canada
size	186 cm
Weight	90 kg

position	defender
Shot hand	Left

Career stations

1980-1982	Billings Bighorns
1985-1992	EC Hanover
1992-1995	Krefeld penguins
1995-1997	Frankfurt Lions
1997-1999	Crocodiles Hamburg

Greg Thomson (born May 28, 1963 in Edmonton , Alberta ) is a German - Canadian ice hockey coach . Since December 2016 he has been an assistant trainer at the Kölner Haien .

During his playing career he stood for the Krefeld Pinguine and the Frankfurt Lions from the German Ice Hockey League . Furthermore, he completed six full international matches for the German national team in 1993 .

Career

As a player

Thomson began his career in 1980 in the Canadian Junior Western Hockey League with the Billings Bighorns , for which he completed only five games in two years in which he was under contract with the Billings. In the 1985/86 season , the left shooter was under contract with EC Hannover, which was also his first career stop in Germany. There he also acted as team captain . Three seasons later he was promoted to the 2nd Bundesliga with EC Hannover . The trained defender was one of the team's best scorers and was able to score 40 points in 32 games in his first season in the second-highest German division. In the following years he was able to continuously increase his points yield and came in a total of 113 games to 157 points scorer.

In the summer of 1992 he joined the Krefelder EV, with which he was a founding member of the German Ice Hockey League in 1994. At the end of the 1994/95 season , his contract in Krefeld was not extended and so he moved to league rivals Frankfurt Lions , where he played for two years. He then signed a contract with the Hamburg Crocodiles . There he ended his active ice hockey career in 1999 at the age of 39. His shirt number 15 hangs under the stadium roof in the ice rink at the horse tower.

As a trainer

His first team, which he coached, were the Hannover Indians, for whom he had already worked as a player for seven years. In the years between 2002 and 2006 he was behind the gang with the Indians, who were playing in the major league at that time. In December 2007, the native Canadian moved to ERC Ingolstadt , where he then worked as an assistant trainer. At the end of November 2008 he finally took over the office of trainer in Ingolstadt. There he inherited Benoît Laporte , under whom he had previously worked as an assistant coach. In the 2009/2010 season he worked under Bob Manno again initially as an assistant coach in order to lead the team into the semifinals of the DEL play-offs in February after his dismissal. From the 2010/11 season he was head coach at ERC Ingolstadt until October 4, 2010. For the 2012/2013 season, Thomson was introduced as assistant coach of the Augsburg Panthers alongside head coach Larry Mitchell . Greg Thomson played his first game as head coach after Mitchell was fired on December 5, 2014 against the Straubing Tigers. He stayed with the Panthers until the end of the 2014/15 season.

In August 2015, he was appointed head coach of the Japanese national team. At the U20 World Cup (Division 1, A-Group) in 2011 and at the Division 1 A-Group World Cup in Kraków in 2015, he had previously been part of the Japanese coaching staff at two tournaments under Mark Mahon . On December 23, 2016, the Kölner Haie announced Thomson's engagement as assistant coach.