White Bear Lake forward Maddie Lee is ready to have an exceptional season this year as a senior.

The St. Cloud State commit was on a roll in 2024-25 as a junior and had secured 30 points through 18 games and if Lee hadn’t wound up breaking her foot before warmups one game, thus leading to six weeks of missed competition, who knows how many points she would’ve ended up with.

“In our second game (of the season), we were warming up and I broke my foot doing karaoke,” joked Lee about the odd, freak accident that result in her injury. “I ended up playing that game because I didn’t know it was broken at the time, so I played in our first two games and then I was out until after Christmas.”

Lee originally just thought she rolled her ankle or something and after discussing her potential injury with the team’s athletic trainer it seemed okay to compete in the game that night as long as she wasn’t in too much pain. After the match, it was clear that it was definitely not just a rolled ankle and that it was something more serious as Lee took off her skate and was extremely surprised at how large and swollen her foot had become. She played in the game on November 12 and didn’t compete again until December 17 since she had to wear a boot for about four weeks and couldn’t get back on the ice for approximately six weeks.

That was obviously a tough blow for the White Bear Lake squad, considering that Lee is a top athlete on the team and she had led the entire roster in scoring the year prior as just a sophomore. The Bears ended up going 7-17-2 last season but more specifically were 1-6-1 while Lee was recovering from her injury, with the lone victory coming in overtime to Wayzata. Interestingly enough, Lee’s injury came before a game against Park of Cottage Grove and the game she eventually returned to the roster in once she was healed up was also against Park of Cottage Grove. She had two goals in her debut match after recovering from her broken foot, so she was clearly ready to get back out on the ice.

Now, as a senior, Lee is a captain of the squad and is looking forward to playing a complete season of hockey for White Bear Lake. The now 17-year-old skater had 13 points in the last eight games of the season last year, so it’s safe to say that she’ll want to be picking up right where she left off.

In 2025-26, the Bears actually have a large portion of seniors on the roster (8). This will be significant since in the years prior there haven’t been too many seniors on the squad. There were a good amount last winter in 2024-25 but in Lee’s first few seasons on varsity it was a pretty young roster for the most part with a lot of underclassmen. In fact, there wasn’t a single senior on the team during her eighth grade season at White Bear Lake in 2021-22.

“We’re feeling good (about the 2025-26 season), this is the first year where we have a ton of seniors so we actually have a more experienced older group - which is going to be super fun,” Lee told APX reporter Sydney Wolf. “Our goal is to just go out and play with a ton of energy and have a lot of fun together and I think we’re just gonna take it to teams and compete really hard - and I think that’s kind of our strong suit, our compete level, so hopefully we keep that up as we have in years past.”

As a senior, Lee is serving as a captain of the team this year and she says that she tends to be more of a vocal leader and that she enjoys being a voice that can lead others in the group and that she wants to be a person that the younger girls can trust, respect, and look up to.

Lee also just so happens to be the only skater on the White Bear Lake squad this year that is committed to play hockey at the Division I level. After her breakout sophomore season where she led the Bears in scoring, the forward eventually to the Huskies in October of 2024.

“I am so grateful and excited to announce my commitment to play Division I hockey and continue my education at St. Cloud State University! Thank you to God, my coaches, friends, and family who have made this dream come true,” she posted to her social media pages.

When schools were originally starting to reach out to the White Bear Lake native in the summer between her sophomore and junior years, Lee knew that she wanted to stay relatively close to home and that it would be a dream to play in the WCHA due to its competitive nature.

“I was talking to schools out east and here (in MN) and I think just something that’s important for me is having my parents able to come to my games and so picking St. Cloud is perfect because my parents will be able to come watch and support me,” said Lee about her choice to commit to SCSU. “A big reason why I picked St. Cloud is just because of their coaching staff too, I just like fell in love with all of them and I connected really well with them. Going on my visit, I really liked the atmosphere there too and the culture that they had and were developing - it was just a perfect fit for me.”

Lee was originally recruited to St. Cloud by previous head coach Brian Idalski, who recently departed the program this past offseason to became the inaugural head coach of the Vancouver Goldeneyes of the PWHL. When the newest head coach Mira Jalosuo was brought on campus, Lee connected with her and she was eventually able to go to a camp this summer and got to be coached by her at some of those practices and liked her a lot. She still knows the assistant coaches on the team though since those didn’t change this offseason so she is still familiar and comfortable with all of them as well.

It helps too that she’ll have some familiar faces on campus in the future too since her former teammate Gabby Hofeld (‘24 graduate) of the Bears now currently plays Division II soccer at St. Cloud State, so she was a great recruiting resource and was able to answer a lot of questions that Lee had about the school, the campus and the city in general.

Lee is a through and through White Bear Lake athlete as she has grown up in the area, played for the Bears youth hockey association, and now is competing for the high school team. As the youngest in her family, Lee grew up watching her older brother and sister play hockey and she wanted to be like them so she decided to play the sport too. Her father was also a hockey player at Mounds View high school back in the day so there are plenty of family ties to the game. Lee’s dad actually wound up coaching her up all the way up until the high school level and she says that it was great to have him by her side all the way up through the ranks of youth hockey.

The forward was originally brought up to the varsity level as just an eighth grader and wound up scoring six points through 27 games for the Bears in 2021-22 who went 6-18-1 overall.

“It was definitely tough (the jump up to the varsity level), just the pace change from 12U to high school was a lot different and more physical and everything,” the 17-year-old said about her first varsity season. “I think what helped me so much was just the community and the girls and what we do now of having the older girls go to a lot of the youth practices and stuff … so going into high school, I already knew some of the girls and just having them kind of going through it with me was super nice.”

In Lee’s first two seasons on varsity, White Bear Lake had an extremely young roster. The Bears had no seniors on the team when Lee was in eighth grade and there were only three the year after when she was a freshman. Things started to look up though as the skater entered her sophomore season and had a bit of a breakout year in 2023-24, considering that she led the team in both assists (24) and overall scoring (39).

“A big thing for me was just that that’s kind of when I changed in hockey and started doing stuff outside of practice,” she said about quadrupling her point production from freshman to sophomore year. “I just really grew a love for the sport that year and really decided I wanted to play in college and so I just kind of found more motivation to get better and train harder and I also think the coaching change that year really kind of helped us all just start new too.”

The team went 15-11 that year, a winning record, and maybe things would’ve been different in 2024-25 if Lee hadn’t have gotten injured last season and missed a chunk of games, along with a handful of other girls who were fighting injuries as well.

For now, Huskies fans can get excited about Lee as both a phenomenal player and teammate both on and off the ice. She says that she prides herself on being strong in many areas on the ice but that her speed usually sticks out the most to people. She uses that speed to get around defenders and can quickly skate up and down the ice, all while being a 200-foot hockey player with a solid forecheck and back check.

Once she gets out to St. Cloud State next fall, Lee is considering majoring in something like exercise science or nursing. When she’s not out on the ice, the White Bear Lake native enjoys supporting her friends and getting out to watch and cheer on other sports and activities for the Bears.

The Bears are currently 0-1 on the season in a home opener loss to Wayzata on November 6, but the team has upcoming matches against Mounds View/Irondale, Roseville/Mahtomedi, and Stillwater over the next week where they will try to get into the win column.

READ OUR OTHER SENIOR SPOTLIGHT FEATURES: