Teddy Lechner had an extremely busy schedule in the month of October, to say the least. He was competing with Team APX in the Upper Midwest High School Elite League and was planning on staying with that squad up until the start of the high school season in November but he wound up getting a call from his father one day that changed everything. He received word that he was being called up to fill in a temporary spot with the U.S. National Team Development Program, which is something that only a handful of skaters in the entire country get to experience.

“It was kind of all out of nowhere, I was in the mindset of going into playoffs for APX (in Elite League) and then out of nowhere my dad called me when I was at school one day and said I was going to go play three games with Team USA,” Lechner said about when he first learned that he was getting called up to the NTDP in early October. “It was definitely a really cool situation that I was very thankful for.”

Lechner, a 6-foot-3 defenseman, suited up for three games with the team and got to compete against the Madison Capitols and the Green Bay Gamblers of the USHL. After playing well in those three appearances, good things kept on coming for the Bloomington, Minnesota, native who was then subsequently called up by the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL once his time with the NTDP was over.

“It was just a couple days later (after his stint with the NTDP) that Jimmy (McGroarty), the GM for Muskegon, called me and asked me if I wanted to come down there until the high school season started and it was a no brainer for me,” said the 17-year-old.

Clearly things were going quite well for the junior defenseman but his development had taken a very different path than what he had expected after thinking he would play in all of his Elite League games and then join his high school team as usual. Instead, he went from Elite League, to the NTDP, and finally to Muskegon, all in a few short weeks before his high school hockey season started at the Academy of Holy Angels in November.

During his time in Muskegon, Lechner appeared in eight games with the squad and posted an assist, his first USHL point, in one of those match-ups.

“It definitely gave me a lot more confidence,” he said about competing against some of the top young skaters in the nation in the USHL and how he felt returning to the Stars varsity roster after that. “It’s a little bit of a transition playing such a fast-paced game in the USHL but it definitely helped me.”

While in Muskegon, the NHL Central Scouting Preliminary List was released and Lechner was listed as a ‘C’ level prospect - otherwise known as an athlete who has the potential to be a fourth or fifth-round draft pick for the upcoming 2026 NHL Draft. Obviously, this means that there have been a lot of scouts and coaches who had been watching the Bloomington native’s development over the past few years and had been impressed with his steady rise throughout this past summer and fall.

After such a busy few weeks with the NTDP and the USHL and then being named to the NHL Central Scouting list, you would think that things slowed down a bit from there for the APX athlete but no - the accolades for Lechner just kept on coming and he wound up announcing his commitment to play Division I hockey at Augustana University in early November, right around the time that he returned to the Academy of Holy Angels for his junior season of high school hockey.

“I’m honored to announce my commitment to further my education and play D1 hockey at Augustana University,” he posted to his social media pages. “Thank you to God, my family, friends, teammates, coaches and advisors for supporting me and guiding me along the way.”

The Vikings are a program that were in touch with Lechner early on in the recruiting process and were very diligent about staying connected with him and letting him know that they were interested from the get-go.

“The big thing was to go where you feel you’re wanted the most, and I felt like that was Augustana,” he said about his decision. “They call me on a weekly basis, come to a lot of games to connect in person, and their coaching staff is all great over there. They’re a newer program and it’s been great seeing all the success that they’ve had so early on and it’s only going to keep going up.”

Committing to the Vikings may have been a shock to some high school hockey fans who may have thought that Teddy might have wanted to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Henry, who is committed to the University of St. Thomas. Teddy said that it was great to have an older sibling who had already gone through the recruiting process and could guide him through some things and tell him more about what to expect but that Henry truly wanted him to make his own decision and follow the path that he thought would be best for his own development.

Augustana, which is a private Lutheran university located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is one of the newer men’s Division I ice hockey programs but it is no stranger to recruiting Minnesotans to its roster. Head Coach Garrett Raboin is a Minnesotan and he has recruited plenty of Minnesotans to the team’s current roster and there are plenty more in the pipeline as well, such as guys that Lechner is already a bit familiar with such as Tyden Bergeson (Moorhead), Brock Cheslock (Rogers) and Caleb Pittsley (Edina).

The Lechner brothers, Teddy and Henry, got into playing hockey when they were young after seeing a friend wearing a hockey hat one day and deciding that they wanted to try out an open skate and they both fell in love with it from there. Older brother Henry had pretty much always been a forward but Teddy didn’t become a defenseman until a little later on in his development - he was actually a goalie for two or three years before switching over to being a skater. He would practice his goalie skills by going one on one with Henry but after realizing that goaltending might not be the perfect fit he decided to become a defender instead since he already knew that he loved the defensive side of the game.

Eventually, Teddy made the jump up to the varsity team at Holy Angels as just a freshman in high school. He earned an honorable 16 points through 26 games played that season in 2023-24 and he said that playing alongside his brother and knowing a large portion of the team already helped ease his way in to the higher level of competition.

“It was a lot different, it was definitely faster paced, but having a brother who had played on the team for two years already - I had watched a lot of those games and got used to that pace,” he said. “Coach Griswold put a lot of trust in me too and over time helped me to adjust to the play style.”

The Stars posted a 16-10-1 overall record during Teddy’s freshman season and improved to 22-4-1 during his sophomore year. Not only did the team improve as a whole but Teddy’s stats took a big leap forward by going from 16 total points to 28 total points from Year 1 to Year 2 on varsity. As just a sophomore, he was at over a point-per game scoring pace.

“Talking with Coach and everyone else, we went in with the mindset of the summer between freshman and sophomore year has to be a big jump,” the now 17-year-old said about wanting to train hard that offseason. “The production then went up for me and I kind of just grew with more confidence (as a sophomore).”

In the summer of 2025, Lechner’s development really started to take off and he was selected to participate in the USA Boys National 17 Festival for the top skaters in the 2008 birth year. That was before his whirlwind of a fall prior to his Division I commitment and now the start of his junior season of hockey at Holy Angels.

Obviously, this year the Stars roster looks a bit different with older brother and former leading scorer Henry now graduated and competing in the USHL but the Holy Angels squad is still packed with talent (including plenty of APX athletes) and will be a top team to watch out for in 2025-26.

“This year is a lot different with losing him (Henry) and we also lost our starting goalie (to graduation) as well but we still have Cole (Cheeseman) and Lincoln (Ayers-Assad) who are two kids that can be Mr. Hockey candidates and we have a really strong D-core with Avi (Kasargod), Gabe (Perron) and two or three new kids,” he said about some of the differences this winter. “I feel like our depth this year is a lot different, we’re having a lot of guys stepping up and you can see it.”

The Stars team is currently 3-1 on the season, with wins over Minneapolis, Duluth East and Holy Family and a loss in the season opener to St. Thomas Academy.

“We’re a gritty team, we’re going to get the puck deep on them and make teams scared of us. There’s scoring all around, we’re not just top-heavy, we’re going to wear you out,” Lechner said about what people can expect from Holy Angels for the rest of the 2025-26 season.

Up next for Holy Angels is a home game against Dodge County on Dec. 12 and an away match against Breck on Dec. 13.

For any Augustana fans who haven’t been able to watch Lechner play much yet, he describes himself as a defense-first skater who likes to shut down the top athletes on opposing teams. Even with defense being his first priority, the right-shot skater already has four points in three games this season as a junior and will likely have many more to come throughout the next few months.

Lechner has been training with APX over the past two summers and joined the program after hearing good things about it from his brother who has trained here for multiple seasons. He says that the on and off ice training has pushed him to become a better player and person overall and that it is helping to prepare him for the next level.

Although hockey takes up most of his time now, when Lechner isn’t on the ice you can typically find him golfing or playing pickleball in the summer when the weather is nice. He is currently undecided on what he will study once he gets out to college at Augustana.

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