NAHL’s Mallards to play at Sports Center
Junior hockey will return to Forest Lake this fall.
The Minnesota Mallards will join the North American Hockey League, a Tier II Junior league that currently has 32 teams in 17 states, and will call Forest Lake home in the coming season.
This will be the first junior hockey league team in the city since the Forest Lake Lakers of the then-Minnesota Junior Hockey League set up shop at the Forest Lake Sports Center. That team joined the U.S. Premier Hockey League in 2015, then changed its name to the Minnesota Mullets prior to the 2017-18 season before leaving at the end of the 2018-19 season.
“We’re very excited to be coming to Forest Lake,” said A.J. Buccino, who will serve as the Minnesota Mallards’ general manager. “We want to make the games a cool experience, and our owner is willing to invest in that.
“We want it to be a cool environment for kids and families that love hockey. Really, it’s going to be affordable as well — tickets will be roughly $6-$10 a game — so it will be fun to be there.”
The Mallards are an expansion team that will play in the NAHL’s Central Division. The league, which this year will celebrate its 50th anniversary, is one of only two U.S.-based junior hockey leagues that operates on a model that is not play-to-play for players ages 16-20.
Last season more than 350 players with ties to the league received commitments to play NCAA hockey, and six former NAHL players were listed on the final rankings for the 2024 NHL Draft.
The Mallards will join franchises in Austin and St. Cloud as three of the four teams in the league from Minnesota. The rest of the Central Division includes teams in Aberdeen and Watertown, South Dakota; Bismarck and Minot, North Dakota; and Mason City, Iowa.
The Minnesota Wilderness, based in Cloquet, play in a different division of the NAHL.
“In North America, the USHL and the NAHL have an affiliation with USA Hockey, the national development program,” Buccino said. “The league has been around for a very long time.
“They have a commissioner who’s among the best in junior hockey in Mark Frankenfelt, and he and his team have been very helpful as we bring this team together.”
That’s especially important because the Forest Lake franchise received formal approval to join the league roughly three months ago.
“Truth be told, the team’s owner, Charles Bailey, was approved to join the league a couple of years ago,” Buccino explained. “But the region and division we wanted to go to weren’t ready for us, so that part was not approved.
“So we had to make a decision: Did we want to move the franchise to a place outside of the Twin Cities, or did we wait for another opportunity? We decided to wait for another opportunity.”
In March of 2024, the league called and said it had an opening in the Central Division.
“We spent two years going about our business, and then we got a call and we needed to make a decision in just a few weeks,” Buccino said. “We reached out to a few communities, but when we talked to the folks in Forest Lake – in particular [rink manager] Mike Elam, who is a great guy – we realized Forest Lake was a hidden gem.
“The facilities are great; they aren’t too big, but they’re not too small. They have plenty of space. They have an ETS Performance [location] on the main floor, and there’s a weight room, video rooms and a nice locker room.”
Buccino said the facility’s capacity of roughly 1,000 fans per game is right within the criteria for the league.
“We like Forest Lake because of its size and location — it has that ‘mom and pop’ feel, but it’s still close to civilization,” he said. “There are things to do, and it’s closer to the big cities.
“The Twin Cities are the most-scouted, most-exposed area for hockey in the United States. We wanted to make sure that, if we were going to do this, we were located in a premier place where potentially 10-to-50 scouts could be there at every game. That would give motivated hockey players a chance to be seen.”
Buccino said the team will draw players from around the world — but will have a local flavor as well.
“We’re going to have a lot of Minnesota-born players, a lot of Wisconsin-born players, a number of Canadian players and players from all over,” he said. “Our goal is to dominate the Minnesota-Wisconsin market. We want the best players from Minnesota and Wisconsin to play for us. It’s that simple. …
“It’s a unique opportunity to live at home and play junior hockey. We want to attract players from this area who love where they’re from and want to play in front of local fans and a number of scouts every night.”
The team’s nickname of “Mallards” and its maroon and gold colors are by design.
“We think it’s an awesome name,” Buccino said. “We kept the Gophers’ colors because those are the colors of Forest Lake, too. We wanted to create a connection with the Forest Lake community, from the high school all the way down to the youth teams.”
The team’s coach, Terry Watt, is a Canadian who played collegiately at Buffalo State College before embarking on a professional hockey career that took him to 14 teams and four continents.
“Terry is from Canada who recently has been located out East and has coached in other leagues,” Buccino said. “Terry worked for my dad, so I’ve watched him work and I’ve watched him grow.
“You want to hire people you can trust that you have synergy with. Because of his reliability and history, we thought he’d be a great fit for the team.”
Buccino said Watt also buys into the culture that he and Bailey wish to forge with the franchise.
“We want to create an organization that’s about the player first and winning championships second,” Buccino said. “We want to win, but the goal of junior hockey is to help players reach their goals. We want to create a nurturing development model that takes care of a player emotionally, psychologically and physically.
“The Forest Lake facility and coaching staff will provide premier training to help our players prepare for the weekend [games], the season, and for life.”
The team’s schedule runs from September until mid-April, followed by the playoffs, which should end around Mother’s Day.
“It’s a long season with shorter playoffs,” Buccino said. “That’s why junior hockey is so beneficial: The grind trains the mind so these athletes are ready for college and beyond.”
Because the season starts soon, the team already has held a pre-draft camp in mid-June, with its main camp opening at the end of this month.
The team’s inaugural game will be played on Friday, Sept. 20, against the St. Cloud Norsemen starting at 7:30 p.m.
“It’s not ideal, but we have had roughly four months to make sure we’re ready to operate when the season starts in the fall,” Buccino said. “But we’ll never be in this situation again, because next year we’ll be an existing team and the business will already be running.
“We’re working hard to make it happen.”
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