Minnesota Frost build a Czech connection, including third-round draft pick Klára Hymlárová

When the Minnesota Frost selected Klára Hymlárová in the third round of this year’s PWHL draft, her mom, emotional, told her daughter, “You’re staying home.”

That’s not an entirely rare sentiment for a Frost player. Nine on this season’s roster were raised in the State of Hockey.

But not Hymlárová. The 25-year-old rookie’s path to Minnesota began 4,700 miles away, in her hometown of Opava in the eastern Czech Republic.

The distance didn’t daunt St. Cloud State’s coaching staff when it asked Hymlárová to plant new roots. In fact, it excited them. Eager to up their European recruiting, the Huskies were keen on Hymlárová's early success with the Czech national team. The forward had featured on her first senior IIHF World Championships roster at only 16.

“The biggest thing Europeans bring is their experience playing at a high level, their maturity,” St. Cloud State associate head coach Jinelle Siergiej said. “[Hymlárová] brought kind of that higher expectation to the team.”

After a year in Canada at the elite Ontario Hockey Academy, Hymlárová headed west to St. Cloud, where she recorded 36 goals and 53 assists across five seasons. She skated as both forward and defender, playing on the penalty kill and quarterbacking the power play.

In June, she became the first Huskies player drafted into the PWHL, and the Frost are working her into their system entering Game 2 of the season on Wednesday in Boston. It’s a rematch of last year’s championship series that the Frost took in five games.

At only 5-4, Hymlárová plays with an outsized physicality and what Frost coach Ken Klee called “tremendous hockey sense,” which made her a versatile pickup for the reigning champs heading into the league’s second season.

“She can play center, she can play wing, she can play D,” Klee said. “She can fill a lot of roles for us, which on a short roster of 23, that was something we valued.”

Her former St. Cloud State teammates made the drive to St. Paul to watch her debut for the Frost in Sunday’s 4-3 overtime loss to New York.

“This is my home for the last five years,” Hymlárová said. “I know the city, and I also have some friends from college [in the Twin Cities], so it’s nice to know people outside of the team, too, that I can hang out with.”

And when Hymlárová rolled into the Frost’s preseason camp in November, there was one more familiar face on the ice: Czech teammate Denisa Křížová.

Křížová has known the rookie for a decade, since Hymlárová emerged on the national team scene a few years behind the now 30-year-old reigning Czech Player of the Year. Together on the same line, they helped their country qualify for its first Olympics in 2022, securing the bid in front of a home crowd.

“When we won the last game against Hungary, it was just an unforgettable feeling,” Křížová said. Hymlárová's dad was crying in the stands, watching his daughter book her ticket to Beijing. “Seeing your loved ones, seeing your families cheering for you, having happy tears in their eyes.”

They’d go on to win the nation’s first world championship medal later that year: bronze in 2022, then again in 2023.

Far from home, the two share a language and a little chirps on the ice. “We laugh a lot,” Křížová said. “The humor here is a little different than what we have at home.”

A Northeastern alum, Křížová was the first Czech drafted into the now-defunct National Women’s Hockey League in 2017. Now, eight Czech players compete in the PWHL, including Wednesday’s opponent, Boston defender Daniela Pejšová, a first-round draft pick who, at 22, is the youngest player in the PWHL.

Their Czech squad will also host the next IIHF World Championships in April 2025.

“It’s great for the whole Czech Women’s Hockey Association to have more Czech girls in this league,” Křížová said. “That’s what’s automatically making us better individually, which puts all the work together as one when we meet together for the national team camp.”