New Junior Hockey Team Coming to Maple Grove

Maple Grove is getting a new junior hockey team, with “new” being the preferred term.

Maple Grove Energy Hockey will be filling the void left behind by the Wildcats, who left the Minnesota Junior Hockey League after last season for a different conference. The team has a new owner and a new name, but that’s about all that has changed.

The team will occupy the same arena, have the same coach and director of operations and play in the same conference that the Wildcats did. But Cal Ballard doesn’t want to think of his new team as the resurrected Wildcats.

“Everything about it is new,” said Ballard, the team’s director of hockey operations. “We wanted to include ‘Maple Grove’ in the name because of how well the community has treated us.”

The league is made up of players coming of high school who are looking to earn a spot on a higher junior league team or college team. Ballard said many of the players are from outside of the state because their hockey leagues aren’t as competitive as Minnesota’s.

“They need that little extra push,” Ballard said.

While they play a grueling 50-game schedule that spans five months, players typically hold down a job or earn college credit at a local community college, Ballard said. Players that go on to play in college typically end up in small private colleges in the area like Bethel in St. Paul or Augsburg.

Other players may move up to higher amateur leagues like the United States Hockey League. 

Ballard will keep long-time friend Jon Liesmaki on as the coach. The two have known each other since Liesmaki was a captain of a junior hockey team in the iron range named the Yellow Jackets, which Ballard owned a decade ago.

After leaving that team, Liesmaki played for Augsburg College in Minneapolis, where he got his master’s degree. He then took some time off from the sport, and worked on the west coast for several years before coming back to Minnesota.

About two years after his return, Liesmaki got a call from Ballard asking him when the annual Yellow Jackets reunion was going to take place. He also mentioned that he was looking for a coach to lead a junior hockey team.

Liesmaki had been thinking about coaching hockey someday and a return to the same league that gave him his start seemed like the perfect opportunity.

He now works as an environmental safety engineer for Honeywell in Plymouth and said he’s one of the few coaches in the league with a full-time job.

“This is an extremely big time commitment,” he said. But after years away from the game, he returned because of an “absolute love of the game.”

That, Liesmaki added, and the opportunity to give players and education like he had.

Maple Grove Energy Hockey will hold tryouts on August 19,20 and 21 in Rogers. More information about tryouts or helping the organization, check out www.energyhockey.com.