After forward Anthony Preskar had played one full season of junior hockey in the NAHL with the Chippewa Steel in 2024-25 as one of the youngest players on the team, he knew that he wanted to make a big impact in Year 2. With a full year of experience under his belt, he wanted to set high - but reasonable - expectations for himself in his second full year of NAHL competition.

After posting five points in 35 games during his rookie season with the Steel, Preskar tripled his output through just the first 25 games of his second season with the team despite a subpar year for Chippewa as a whole. The Steel, who recently relocated and rebranded as the ‘Pueblo Peppers’ of Colorado, underwent several coaching and staffing changes over the past calendar year, and the team as a whole finished in last place of the NAHL’s Midwest Division in 2026.

Preskar knew that he was starting to hit his stride in his own personal gameplay but unfortunately saw the trajectory that Chippewa was on and knew that a change might be necessary. He finished out the first half of the season with the Steel up through winter break but had been talking to some other teams in the NAHL and some in the BCHL when he eventually found a good spot with the Salmon Arm Silverbacks. It would’ve been easy to stay close to home and stay with Chippewa - located in Wisconsin- while his family lives in the Chicago suburbs, but he knew that he would need to take a chance and go elsewhere if he wanted to be on a successful team that would likely get more looks from college hockey coaches and scouts. Right after the Christmas holiday, the 6-foot-4 forward headed out to British Columbia for a new chapter in his hockey career.

Moving up to Western Canada was obviously much different for the Illinois native as he was now much further away from home and didn’t have a car with him at the time, but it didn’t take long for him to grow to love the scenic town located almost equidistant between Vancouver and Calgary. The Silverbacks had a close-knit group of guys on the team that made it easy for Preskar to feel like he was a part of the family, and it was also a big bonus to ‘feel like you’re on a movie set’ every day when you go to practice, and you see majestic mountains all around you. In addition to being a fun, welcoming environment in the heart of a beautifully mountainous area, Preskar also caught on quite quickly to the level of play in Salmon Arm and posted almost a point per game through the second half of the season.

“It’s not hard to enjoy your time there [in Salmon Arm] when you walk outside and see mountains and you can go on hikes after practice, and you just see the crazy scenery,” said the 19-year-old forward about his time in British Columbia. “That really helped break up the hockey and the life aspect of it, and it helped to balance everything out.”

The forward had previously not heard from many NCAA programs when he was in Chippewa, but that all changed almost immediately once he got to Salmon Arm. By proving that he could make the jump to the BCHL and still produce at a high level, multiple Division I programs started to reach out to him early on during his time in Canada. This was quite the 180 for the young skater, but in an entirely positive way.

One of the schools that reached out early on, around February of 2026, was Army West Point. The two parties talked for a while but weren’t able to get Preskar out on an official visit until the season ended, and things slowed down a bit in the offseason. He wound up going out to the campus located in New York and had dinner with the coaching staff and was immediately drawn to the program after seeing what the team was all about in person. In late June of 2026, Preskar decided that the Black Knights were the right fit for his hockey future and he decided to make it official and commit to Army on his social media pages.

“I am extremely honored and humbled to announce my commitment to continue my academic career and play Division I college hockey at U.S. Army West Point,” he posted to his Instagram page on June 26, 2026. “I would like to thank my family, friends, coaches, and most importantly God for the everlasting support throughout this journey and making this dream achievable. #GoArmy”

Preskar knows that hockey operates at a high-level at West Point, but one of the biggest factors in his decision to commit there was the opportunity to receive an excellent education at the highly regarded military academy.

“I’ve always wanted to use hockey to get the best education that I can - I want to think about life after hockey - and I don't know if there’s a better place on earth to set you up for life than West Point,” he said about his decision. “They’re getting you one of the best educations in the entire country, and you’re developing as a human, a leader, and shaping so many personal traits that you can’t learn anywhere else, and the coaching staff is unbelievable; they’re all great people, and the campus is one of the most historic campuses in the entire country.”

The Illinois native doesn’t have too strong of familial ties to the military, but his grandfather, on his mother’s side, did serve in Vietnam, so there is some family history there.

As of this current moment, Preskar isn’t quite sure yet what he’ll major in once he gets out to campus in the future, but recruits at West Point aren’t rushed to pick a field of study, so he knows that he has time to put some more thought into it.

Preskar, the youngest of three children, isn’t the only one in his family who has enjoyed the sport of hockey as his older brother currently works as a scout for Division III Aurora University and hopes to continue working in hockey as a career in the future, and his father also enjoyed playing hockey a bit growing up and originally introduced Anthony to the sport at a young age. The now 19-year-old forward was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, more specifically around the Downers Grove area, and grew up watching the Blackhawks during their excellent Stanley Cup runs in the 2010s.

As a young forward, Preskar played triple-A hockey with the Chicago Fury organization up through his 16U season. He wound up attending a Chippewa Steel camp and wound up earning a tender with the organization while still in high school. After playing 16U hockey with the Fury as a junior in high school, he was then faced with a tough decision for his senior season: either play another year of triple-A or take a chance and play with Chippewa of the NAHL as he impressed the organization at camp and earned a spot on the roster.

“It was a bit of a tough decision, obviously you kind of want to be a kid and your senior year of high school is something that you really look forward to, but at the end of the day I felt like it was such a good opportunity with great coaches and everything, so I felt like I had a good chance to start my junior career there and to really develop there, so I ended up taking it,” he said about his decision to forgo a typical senior year of high school and to pursue junior hockey instead. “It was a little bit of a tough decision, but honestly I just didn’t think I could pass it up.” 

The Steel weren’t located too far away from home, but it was still between a four/five hour drive one way, so Preskar had to finish up his high school classes online that year. It was obviously a bit tricky getting used to living away from home for the first time, but an excellent billeting situation wound up being a tremendous help as he was living with great people who helped make the transition much easier. That didn’t mean that the jump up from triple-A to the NAHL was an easy one though, as the level of play was much higher and Preskar was competing against guys that were three or four years older than he was at the time.

“I was super excited [to get started in Chippewa] because it was something that I’d been working towards, so I was ready to make the jump, but obviously at first it took a bit to get acclimated to it and playing against 20 or 21-year-olds as a 17-year-old is pretty tough,” he said about getting used to the new level of play in the NAHL. “I just tried to have confidence, but it was tough because I did have some high expectations for myself, which in hindsight were probably a little unrealistic, but it’s hard not to want a lot out of yourself. I had to realize that it was a going to be a bit of a growing period and an adjustment period before I would be able to really find my own and then once I realized and accepted that I was able to have a lot more success and I got a lot more comfortable and I started playing more and was taking in the little wins and not setting those super unrealistic kind of expectations.”

Preskar posted five points through 35 games played that season but learned a whole lot about himself and what it would take to be a successful player in junior hockey. Because of that, he felt much more confident heading into his second year with the team after his rookie season and was able to set high expectations for himself, but ones that were much more reasonable.

“I felt like going into this past season [in 2025-26], I was able to set high expectations for myself but was more comfortable handling those because I had that experience and I had gone through that growing period, so I felt like in my mind that it was time to gear up and really take off this year and luckily I was able to have a little bit more success being a lot more comfortable and more confident,” he said about entering Year 2 with Chippewa before eventually moving over to Salmon Arm.

Now in the summer of 2026, Preskar recently signed with Moncton of the QMJHL and is hoping to compete with the Wildcats for the upcoming 2026-27 season before likely heading out to West Point next summer. He jokingly said that he might have to study up on some French before heading out to the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League because he certainly doesn’t know any of that language at the current moment.

“I’m a big body, but I can move well for my size,” said Preskar about what makes him unique as a player out on the ice. “I’m very offensive-minded, and I think I play fast for my size, but I also have that aspect of grit and physicality to my game that you need on the ice, so I’m kind of an all-around player who can be put in any situation.”

Whenever the Illinois skater gets out to West Point, he’ll have plenty of familiar faces around him as he knows plenty of the other Army commits from his time in the BCHL and in the NAHL. There were lots of skaters in Chippewa and plenty in Salmon Arm that have committed to the Black Knights over the past two years, so there are a lot of familiar connections there.

Preskar is an APX Client and has been working with APX Senior Advisor Nick Sova - if you need an advisor that’ll help you achieve your goals both on and off the ice, learn more about our team here.

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