Wave upon wave of fans clad in purple and in a celebratory mood will make their way to Xcel Energy Center on Wednesday evening. In this place where professional men’s teams win championships roughly as often as Halley’s Comet makes an appearance, fans of the local pro women’s hockey club, the Minnesota Frost, will party like it’s 2024 and watch their favorite players hoist the Walter Cup, just like they did a year ago at this time.
All seemed right in the State of Hockey one year ago, as the Frost — then known simply as PWHL Minnesota — took the stage in their home rink, with speeches from coach Ken Klee, general manager Natalie Darwitz and key players in the team’s first title run, which saw Minnesota defeat Boston in five games to claim the league’s inaugural championship.
Klee had joined the Minnesota team just days before their first game when their initial pick for a head coach, Charlie Burggraf, stepped down. Living in Denver, Klee was offered the job by PWHL officials, and a few days after Christmas 2023, he hopped in his pickup truck for the 14-hour drive to St. Paul.
One can only hope that what comes next after the 2025 title celebration is a bit more calm than what happened a year ago.
Just days after that 2024 celebration, Darwitz was ousted from her position with the team, revealing an internal conflict between the former prep, Olympic and Gophers star and Klee, among others behind the scenes. With that drama fresh in everyone’s mind and Minnesota hosting the 2024 PWHL draft in St. Paul, Klee took over as the general manager on a temporary basis. From an optics standpoint, draft night could hardly have gone worse for the local hockey club.
While the league’s five other teams had their first round picks on stage, Frost first rounder Clair Thompson wasn’t there, and she spoke to reporters via Zoom an hour or so after her name was called.
With some fans holding signs in support of Darwitz and booing Klee when he would come on stage, the Frost took controversial Wisconsin standout Britta Curl-Salemme in Round 2. Curl’s on-ice acumen has never been questioned, but her past social media history has drawn the attention of the LGBTQ+ community, and questions were immediately raised about how she would fit in the Minnesota locker room.
In Round 3, the Frost picked Czech standout Klara Hymlarova, who had played collegiately at St. Cloud State. They specifically did not grab former Hill-Murray and Gophers standout Abigail Boreen, who had played a key role in Minnesota’s 2024 PWHL title run, but had to re-enter the draft because she had been signed under a series of 10-day standard player agreements.
Two picks later, Montreal drafted Boreen, prompting another cascade of boos from the Minnesota fans in attendance.
By the time Klee met with reporters in the waning minutes of draft day, it was clear that the Minnesota Frost were now his team, and his alone. While Melissa Caruso was named the Frost’s new general manager in September, the title defense effort was clearly on Klee’s shoulders, with fans expecting nothing less than another lap around the rink with the Walter Cup.
With a week to go in the 2025 regular season, it looked like a failed effort.
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Boreen was one of the top point producers for a Montreal team that was best in the PWHL in the regular season. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, following a 2-0 loss to last-place New York in their home finale on April 27, the Frost were on the outside of the playoff picture. But they went on the road for decisive wins at Ottawa and at Boston to close the regular season, just barely squeaking into the four-team postseason field.
The Frost won a high-scoring, first-round playoffs series with Toronto, then switched gears and won three out of four games versus Ottawa in the championship round with each game ending 2-1 in overtime. Thompson, Curl-Salemme and Hymlarova all made important contributions, with Curl scoring the tying and winning goals in Game 2, all while hearing a cascade of fan derision every time she touched the puck in Ottawa.
In the victorious postgame locker room on Monday, Klee was doused with a tub of water, as has become a standard practice when celebrating a title.
Starting a year ago, the Frost coach tuned out all of the noise from a hockey-mad, and quite provincial, Minnesota fanbase that doesn’t always welcome outsiders, and directed another somewhat improbable title run.
Klee has earned the celebration that follows.
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