Calls From Home: Augustana men full of 'ThunderVikings'

There are no fewer than four Grand Rapids Thunderhawks on the men’s hockey roster at Augustana, and chief among them is sophomore Hunter Bischoff, who is second on the team in points and assists with a 4-9–13 through 20 games, though freshman Joey DelGreco has five goals and five assists thus far.

Trent Singer / Sioux Falls Live

DelGreco was named CCHA Rookie of the Month for November.

Easton Young has two goals and three assists in 18 games, while Garrett Drotts has four assists in 11 appearances.

Ben Troumbly from nearby Greenway has one assist in seven games.

Augustana is second in the CCHA on points percentage and recently added to its 12-7-1 overall record by sweeping the NCHC's Colorado College Tigers, then ranked No. 8 in the nation, in Colorado Springs.

Speaking of Colorado Springs, Carter Clafton (Grand Rapids) made his first collegiate start for Air Force on Dec. 7 vs. Niagara and allowed two goals on 25 shots in a 4-2 win. Including two other backup appearances, Clafton has a 3.09 goals against average and .875 save percentage.

Nolan Krenzen (Duluth Marshall) has six assists in 20 games for Omaha this season. The graduate student defenseman, named a team captain for the Mavericks for 2024-25, is second on the team in plus/minus at plus-8.

Sophomore Jacob Jeannette (Duluth East) has two goals so far in 2024-25, the most recent coming on Nov. 29 at Niagara. His first collegiate goal came in the season opener at Stonehill on Oct. 11. He also has two assists in 17 games.

Jake Herter (Hermantown) has five points, all assists, in 13 games for Bethel, including three in one game at Hamline on Nov. 22. Teammates Logan Anderson (Duluth East) and Dane Stoyanoff (Cloquet-Esko-Carlton) have two assists apiece in the same span. Stoyanoff, a defenseman, is one of Bethel’s team captains for a second consecutive year.

Christian Miller (Greenway), a junior defenseman for Gustavus Adolphus, scored his first goal of the season and second of his career on Dec. 7 in a road win at Augsburg.

Jackson Lucia (Hermantown) has three assists from the blue line in his first season at Concordia-Moorhead.

Maren Friday (Duluth Marshall) is tied for third on the roster for Union College (N.Y.) with four goals and eight assists in 24 games. Friday, a senior, leads the team in blocked shots with 34. Another Marshall alum, sophomore forward Danica Mark, scored her first collegiate goal on Jan. 4 in a home loss to Princeton.

Ella Anick (Proctor/Hermantown) scored in a meeting between her St. Cloud State team and Union on Nov. 29 in Schenectady, New York, her second goal and fourth point of the senior defenseman’s season.

Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group

Greenway alum Claire Vekich, a former teammate of Anick at Bemidji State, is fifth on the roster at Minnesota State in scoring, with totals of eight goals and six assists in 22 games. The senior scored twice in a Dec. 14 home game against her former team in Mankato.

The current Beavers squad has four local products, with freshman Izy Fairchild (Proctor/Hermantown) recording the most points so far this season: four, including her second goal of the season on Jan. 3 vs. Penn State. Senior Alyssa Watkins (Proctor/Hermantown) has two goals and an assist from early in the season, while freshman Autumn Cooper (Superior) has three assists, the most recent coming in a Nov. 16 home win over St. Thomas.

Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group

Ilsa Lindaman (Duluth Marshall) has two assists in 14 appearances of her freshman season at St. Thomas.

Duluth native Carissa Mudrak remains the starting goalie at Massachusetts-based Assumption, where she has a 3-8-1 record in her grad student season with a .898 save percentage and 3.47 goals against average in 13 appearances.

Duluth Northern Stars alum Grace Karakas already has four goals and two assists to her name in 12 collegiate games at SUNY Cortland, a Division III program in New York currently ranked No. 9 in the USCHO.com national rankings.

Reese Heitzman (Proctor/Hermantown) followed up an All-MIAC season at Saint Mary’s in Winona by co-leading her Cardinals team in points (13) and goals (seven) as a sophomore, including a pair of multi-goal games.

Annika Lindgren (Duluth Marshall) scored her only goal of her junior season thus far in a Nov. 16 home game against Saint Mary’s, but has added five assists. She is now joined on the Pipers roster by former North Shore goalie Harper Powell. The Two Harbors native has appeared in seven games and started two, both wins. She has a .786 goals-against average but just a 1.50 goals-against average. The most recent win came vs. St. Scholastica in Duluth on Dec. 7, in which Powell stopped nine of the 11 shots she faced.

Aurora Opsahl (Proctor/Hermantown) has two goals and seven assists in 11 games this season at the College of Saint Benedict, including her second of three two-assist games this season in a home tie with Wisconsin-Superior. Jorja Jusczak (Moose Lake) is in her first season with the Bennies and has two goals, both against Northland teams. The first was Nov. 5 in a loss to UWS, while her second came Nov. 16 in a 5-0 win over St. Scholastica.

Junior defenseman Tenley Stewart (Cloquet-Esko-Carlton) notched her first goal of the season for Augsburg on Jan. 13 vs. Northland to go with four assists on the season. She also leads her team with 19 blocked shots.

Victor Plante, a UMD commit and Hermantown native, is currently third in points on the U.S. National Team Development Program Under-17 team, with 10 goals and 14 assists in 33 games with the Plymouth, Michigan-based unit. Defensemen J.J. Marthaler (Superior) and A.J. Francisco (Hermantown) are also on this squad, with Marthaler recording five assists in 35 games and Francisco three assists in the same span.

The USNTDP teams play the bulk of their schedule against United States Hockey League teams, which gives them an opportunity to see three local alums who are playing regularly in the league this season.

Proctor native A.J. Reyelts just earned his first shutout in USHL play for the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders when he blanked Waterloo on 30 shots in an overtime win on Saturday.

Reyelts has a 10-10-1-1 record in 24 appearances with a 2.84 goals against average and .894 save percentage.

Dallas Vieau (Hermantown) was traded from the Tri-City Storm to the Sioux City Musketeers in November and has two goals and four assists in 18 games with his new team. The Penn State commit had two goals and two assists in 17 games before the deal.

Former Hawks teammate Kade Kohanski has four goals and nine assists in 32 games with the Lincoln Stars, including a two-goal game at Chicago on Nov. 15.

More than a dozen local products are playing in the North American Hockey League with a significant number in, of all places, Alaska.

Duluth East alum Cole Christian is 15th in the league in points with 13 goals and 26 assists in 32 games for the Anchorage Wolverines.

The Air Force commit has four two-goal games for Anchorage and a four-point (goal and three assists) game vs. the Minnesota Wilderness at home on Nov. 9.

Defenseman Drew Nelson (Hermantown) leads Anchorage defensemen in points with 20 (three goals, 17 assists).

There are three more locals on the Kenai River Brown Bears, where Denfeld alum Andy Larson leads the team in assists with 16 and has 21 points in 33 games for second on the roster. Will Esterbrooks (Hermantown) has three goals and eight assists as a defenseman, while Thomas Gunderson (Duluth East) has posted two goals and six assists.

The league’s third Alaskan squad, the Fairbanks Ice Dogs, is where Hermantown alum Wyatt Carlson does his work, where he’s had nine goals and 18 assists in 29 games.

Back in the Lower 48, Proctor teammates Kennan Reyelts and Carson Pavlowich are playing for the Greeley-based Colorado Grit, where Reyelts has three goals and three assists in 33 games, while the defenseman Pavlowich has a goal and six assists in 26 appearances. Another defenseman, Sam Troutwine (Rock Ridge) has nine assists in 27 games with the Corpus Christi Ice Rays.

Duluth East alum Grant Winkler has three goals and seven assists in 28 games with the Aberdeen Wings, while also in the NAHL’s Central Division, Sam Kartch has three goals in 23 games in his first season with the St. Cloud Norsemen.

Hermantown alum and defenseman George Peterson has three goals and nine assists in 33 games with the Chippewa Steel in Wisconsin while Grand Rapids alum Bauer Murphy has put in 31 games on the blue line with the Janesville Jets, where he has five assists.

There’s even one Northlander in the NAHL’s Eastern Division, where Joe Stauber (Duluth Marshall) has three goals and three assists in 33 games as a defenseman for the Philadelphia Rebels.