Schepers, ‘Blue’ Line Came Up Clutch As Frost Win Another Walter Cup

Liz Schepers scored the game-winning goal in 2024 to help Minnesota win the Walter Cup Championship. Rinse and repeat in 2025.

Schepers, a Mound, Minn. native, scored the overtime, championship-clinching goal 12 minutes into overtime of Game 4 on Monday in front of 11,024 fans at Xcel Energy Center. The goal secured the fourth 2-1 overtime victory of the series against the Ottawa Charge. After linemates Klára Hymlárová and Katy Knoll brought the puck into Ottawa’s zone, Knoll fed Schepers for the goal.

“Just tried to get lost and then made a great play to the front of the net, and I was able to get a couple whacks at it,” Schepers told reporters postgame. “Saw the puck go in, and then I was on my back. Yeah, the celebration was on.”

Unlike last year, when the series went five games, Minnesota enjoyed winning the clinching game on its home ice in downtown St. Paul. The Frost players celebrated back-to-back championships in front of their family, friends, and fans. After dropping Game 1 in Ottawa, the Frost won three consecutive games to win the best-of-five series 3-1.

Frost goaltender Maddie Rooney made 33 saves in the final game for her fifth postseason win in a row.

At the other end, Ottawa rookie goaltender Gwyneth Philips was voted the Ilana Kloss Playoff MVP. She made 33 saves in Game 4 and led all goaltenders with a 1.23 goals-against average and .952 save percentage in eight playoff games. She did not lose a playoff game in regulation.

Knoll was teammates with Philips at Northeastern University, and Knoll was happy and proud of her friend, who deserves all the accolades she received.

“People shouldn’t even be surprised, but she continues to blow everyone’s expectations out of the water,” Knoll said.

Though goaltending was a bright spot for both teams in the series, the depth on Minnesota’s roster predictably was a key factor in getting the victory. The Frost’s fourth line – or Blue Line, as they’re called – of Hymlárová, Schepers, and Knoll scored a combined 13 points in the Walter Cup Finals. That included the series-winning goal.

“To have a coaching staff that has confidence in their fourth line,” Schepers said, “to play us in big moments in overtimes, it gives us a ton of confidence to go out there and to make plays and to contribute to this team.”

Contribute they did. Knoll was the hero in Game 3, a contest that took three overtimes to decide a winner. Knoll, a rookie, scored her second goal of the playoffs at 109:57 to give Minnesota a commanding 2-1 series lead.

Hymlárová, who scored a goal and four assists in the playoffs, assisted on both of their overtime winners. Knoll and Hymlárová each finished with five points in the postseason.

“You look at our Blue Line and how many goals they scored these last few games,” said Minnesota coach Ken Klee. “It just shows, they don’t play the most minutes, but the minutes they do play are super important and super important for our group.

“They play hard. They practice hard every day. They know, ‘Hey, we have a job to do just like everyone else. I’m so happy for them.”

Schepers is back for her second year with Minnesota, centering two rookies in Hymlárová and Knoll on the right wing. Hymlárová, 26, played for St. Cloud State University and is from Czechia. The Frost drafted her in the third round last summer. She scored one goal and one assist in 29 regular-season games before her productive eight playoff games.

Knoll, an Amherst, N.Y. native, was the team's seventh-round pick (39th overall) after a college career at Northeastern University. Like Hymlárová, Knoll scored a goal and an assist in the regular season.

The trio came into the finals having scored 10 points in the semifinals against the Toronto Sceptres, which matched their combined regular-season offensive production.

“My linemates were phenomenal all playoffs long,” Schepers said on May 28, during the Frost’s Walter Cup celebration. “You need that in the postseason. Every team is too good. Every top line is going to almost cancel out every other top line, and you need that depth to be successful and take on some of that production responsibility.”

Schepers, 26, shouldered some of that responsibility last season when she scored the first goal in the team’s 3-0 Game 5 victory in Boston to clinch the championship.

Just how clutch has she been? Schepers has five career PWHL goals, and three of them are in the playoffs. Two of those, of course, clinched the championships. 

Schepers tallied three assists in 19 regular-season games last year before adding a goal and four assists in 10 playoff games. She scored two goals and six points in the regular season this year in 27 games before her two goals and an assist in the postseason.

Rooney noted how solid Schepers has been for Minnesota these two seasons.

“For her to come up big in those moments… the game-winning goals, it just says so much about her,” Rooney said. “She’s just a big-moment, big-game player.”

Before the PWHL, Schepers played with the Minnesota Whitecaps in the PHF, the women’s professional league before the PWHL. She scored 14 points with the Whitecaps in 2022-23 when the team lost the championship to Toronto.

Schepers played college hockey for Ohio State, helping lead the program to its first national championship in 2022. In her five seasons with the Buckeyes, she graduated in the top-10 of all-time scorers in the program with 63 goals and 137 points. Schepers also scored six game-winning goals in 2019-20, good enough for the single-season record in that category. She’s at the top of the Buckeye list with 12 career postseason assists, 18 points, and 170 career games played.

But her roots are in Minnesota, where she played high school hockey with Mound-Westonka. She made two trips to the Class 1A state tournament, scoring two goals and an assist in 2013 and four goals and two assists in a consolation semifinal loss in 2017. Her teams went 0-2 in state quarterfinal games at Xcel Energy Center.

Even at the celebration, winning back-to-back championships as a professional hockey player hadn’t quite sunk in yet.

She said some of her most memorable hockey from preps to college and WCHA tournaments were played in Minnesota, adding that she’s always had a lot of support from Minnesota and college teammates.

“It’s been such a huge part of my career being from here,” Schepers said. “It’s a really full-circle moment coming back and being able to finish this thing on home ice.”

Knoll also had a “full-circle” moment in a bit of a different way. She came off five seasons at Northeastern going into the PWHL Draft last June, held at Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul. She said during the Cup celebration that draft night was “pretty stressful” since she was picked so late, in the seventh round.

She attended the Draft in person, and nearly a year later, she was at the same location celebrating a championship as a pro hockey player.

“I was sitting there thinking, ‘oh wow, who would’ve thought that however many months later that I’d be standing here a Walter Cup Champion?’” Knoll said. “So that was pretty cool.”

Knoll, 24, scored 61 goals and 131 points in 177 games with Northeastern. The 177 games played ranked second all-time in school history.

She said on Wednesday that it was an honor to be drafted by the league's reigning champion.

“I think that also instilled a lot of belief in me,” Knoll said. “That they trusted me to come into this organization and fight for a place. I took that as a little bit of a challenge, and it ended up working out in the end.”

Along with her linemate Hymlárová, the Frost’s rookie class included Britta Curl-Salemme, who scored the late tying goal and overtime winner in Game 2 of the Finals, defenders Claire Thompson and Mae Batherson, and forwards Brooke McQuigge and Dominique Petrie.

Those players also celebrated their first PWHL title alongside plenty of experienced teammates who won the Cup with Minnesota a year ago. Knoll said the combination of young energy and experienced energy was “exactly what we needed. "

“I think that was a lot of what contributed to that great depth that we showed,” Knoll said. “You look at my line in particular… Liz had a lot of that experience from last year, and she was able to help guide us. And I think Klara and I really brought that new, that excited fresh energy.”

Schepers had energy, too, Knoll added. However, it was that leadership sense that helped stabilize the line and give them the confidence to work together as a cohesive line.

Recently, someone asked Knoll to identify her “I made it moment” in the PWHL. She had two answers. The first was when she put on the Frost jersey and secured her spot in the league by playing in a game. Her other moment didn’t happen until Game 3 of the PWHL Finals, when she saw a bunch of signs made by fans with her name on them.

“It just emphasized to me that every single person on this team, regardless of where you’re at in the lineup, everyone’s a role model for the young kids growing up looking to play hockey and to play professionally,” Knoll said. “That kind of resonated with me. It was a really cool moment.”