Lukas Bengtsson signs a two-year contract with the EVZ starting in 2023/24.
The 28-year-old defender joins EVZ from the southern Swedish club Växjö Lakers. “Lukas is an excellent skater with an offensive nose,” says general manager about the 178 cm tall and 82 kg right-shooter. “He is at the ideal hockey age and now wants to take the next career step in the National League. I’m pleased that he will be a part of our organization for the next two years.”
Bengtsson hails from Stockholm, where he also learned the field hockey ABC. In 2010, at the age of 16, he moved to the junior division of Mora IK, 4 hours northwest of the Swedish capital. One season later, Bengtsson made his first appearances at the professional level with Mora, in the second highest Swedish league HockeyAllsvenskan.
In 2015, Frölunda brought the nimble defenseman to Gothenburg for the playoffs, where he became not only Swedish champion but also Champions Hockey League winner a year later. Bengtsson then played for two years with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ AHL farm team, before returning home to Linköping HC for the first time in 2018.
After another three years in the KHL (2019-21 with SKA St. Petersburg, 2021-22 with Dinamo Minsk), the national defenseman signed a contract with Växjö in 2022, for which he scored 11 goals and provided 16 assists in 44 games this season. Bengtsson has now exercised his exit clause at the current SHL runners-up and will tackle a new challenge in Zug over the next two years.
