Jack Dougherty Returns to Orlando Solar Bears
The Solar Bears have signed the 30-year-old defenseman for 2026-27, four seasons after his first stint in Orlando.
Jack Dougherty is coming back to Orlando. The Solar Bears announced Thursday that they have signed the 30-year-old defenseman for the 2026-27 season, ending a three-year run in Europe.
Dougherty's first stop in Orlando was brief. He played 19 games with the Solar Bears during the 2022-23 season, putting up a goal and six assists with a plus-3 rating and 16 penalty minutes, then got a look in the AHL with Belleville, where he appeared in 15 games and recorded two assists. He finished that season overseas with Kolner Haie in Germany.
He stayed there. Dougherty played for the Nurnberg Ice Tigers in the DEL and the Vienna Capitals in the ICE Hockey League before landing with the Sheffield Steelers of the Elite Ice Hockey League for 2025-26. In Sheffield he had two goals and 13 assists in 49 regular-season games, finished plus-24, and added an assist in four playoff games.
The resume before that is deep on this side of the Atlantic. A St. Paul, Minnesota native and a product of the U.S. National Team Development Program, Dougherty was a second-round pick, 51st overall, by Nashville in the 2014 NHL Draft. He won gold with the United States at the 2014 IIHF U18 World Championship, spent one season at Wisconsin, then a year in the WHL with Portland as an alternate captain, where he posted 52 points in 68 games.
His pro career started in the Predators system, with an AHL debut for Milwaukee late in 2015-16 and a 75-game season with the Admirals the following year. He also skated for Rochester, Belleville and Providence. His best AHL output came with Belleville in 2019-20: four goals, 11 assists, 15 points in 59 games.
More than a decade in, he is back where the North American chapter of his career resumed.
