A young Park High girls hockey team which took its lumps last winter returns a year older this season. They’re still young, grant you, but this team has a lot more experience that last year’s bunch.

The Wolfpack had just one senior and three juniors on last year’s team. This year’s team features just two seniors, a few juniors and a host of sophomores and freshmen.

“We graduated one senior, Chloe Bestler, so we’ve got to replace her,” said Park head coach Bay Shock. “But otherwise, it’s going to look much as the same with a few new faces on the varsity but a lot of returning players.”

Park went 8-17 overall last season, including 3-10 in the Suburban East Conference, good for seventh place. That was a pretty big improvement over the 0-16 mark the Wolfpack posted two seasons ago. This year, with more ice time under their belts, the Wolfpack are looking for more improvement and more wins.

The Wolfpack had a rough 11-game losing streak in the middle of the season, but then rallied to go 3-2 in their last five games, including a 6-0 loss to Burnsville in the Section 3AA quarterfinals. Highlights included an early season 3-2 win over East Ridge.

A strength of this year’s team will be goaltending with veterans Tori Stepka and Aubree Laska both returning. Stepka played in 25 games and logged 1,128 minutes in goal last season as a sophomore starter, while Laska appeared in 22 games. Stepka stopped 596 or 668 shots last season, allowing 3.25 goals a game.

“We’ve got some solid goaltending,” said Shock. “They’re both looking really good.”

With an improved defense and a veteran goalie, Park is more likely to win low-scoring games this season than shootouts.

“I definitely think they’ll be low-scoring games,” said Stepka, who will be in goal for the fourth season for Park. Stepka saw a whopping 5:51 in the net as an eighth grader climb to 1,128 minutes logged last season as a sophomore. “I think they’re going to be close. Every goal is going to count this year. For me personally my goal is to keep the goals to a minimum.”

Park’s first line – the black line — returns intact with junior Maggie Jensen, senior Molly Villas and senior Taylar Nadler. Jensen and Villas led Park in scoring last season with 12 goals each.

“You can look at our age as a strength and a weakness because we do have some young players but coming back mostly as returners, we kind of already have an idea of how to play together which will help us a lot,” said Villas. “And I think we had some success with goal scoring last year so hopefully we bring that back and score some more goals and (we have) a great group of girls and tis fun to play with.”

“We have a lot of girls coming back so there’s a lot of experience from the past years and I also think that they’re young they have a lot to learn so with me and Molly we’re able to teach them a lot,” said Nadler.

Other than Villas and Nadler, Park’s team will be underclassmen. The entire third line will be ninth graders. The defensive corps is made up of one junior, two sophomores, a ninth grader and an eighth grader.

“All our d (defense) are back,” Shock noted. “They’re all young still, ninth and 10th and 11th grade,” said Shock.

Park’s defense is expected to be improved this season with the addition of two significant newcomers to the varsity in ninth grader Cara Brenan and eighth grader Alayna Post.

With all areas of the team more experienced, a big need may be just learning how to finish. Too many one- and two-goal games got away from Park last season.

“Finishing obviously,” said Shock. “We’re still young even though they’ve all got a year or two experience. And you’ve got to figure out a way that those one-goal games – you come out on the top. The black line, our first line, has got that experience of scoring and that success. Now we need line two and line three to start gelling and learning where to be and how to put the puck in the net. And goal scoring is going to be our big thing. Can we score goals? Because we’ve got goaltending. We need goal scoring.”

Park opens the season Friday, Nov. 11, at home against Bloomington Jefferson in a game starting at 7:30 p.m. The Wolfpack then hosts White Bear Lake Tuesday, Nov. 15, in their conference opener.

Stillwater and Cretin-Derham Hall should again be the teams to beat in the conference.

“I want our goaltender and our senior leaders, that top line to set a precedent to be better,” said Shock when asked what his expectations for this team are. “I expect a little more … but we’ve got a little experience, so we’ve got to stop saying OK we’re young and then we’ve got to start doing things.”

Park’s players, meanwhile, say a winning season is a reasonable expectation. They note the Suburban East Conference is always strong, but the team’s combination of skill, hard-work and experience should pay dividends this season.

Forward and co-leading returning scorer Molly Villas is one of just two seniors on this year’s Park High girls hockey team. Photo by John Molene