Forest Lake’s Taylor Thompson has had an excellent four-year career on varsity for the Rangers.

The 18-year-old netminder went out on a high note in her final season of high school hockey by posting a .937 save percentage, a 1.58 goals-against average, and seven shutouts for her team which went 14-12-1 overall. The Rangers made it to the Class 7AA semifinal match before eventually losing to Grand Rapids-Greenway in what would be Thompson’s final varsity game.

“I think [the season] went really well up until the end because we didn’t get the ending that we wanted but it really was everything I could have asked for in a season. I had some not great games but I felt really connected with my team and it was fun to be able to share the net with my goalie partner and to be able to see her succeed a lot (senior Kiera Peek, who is committed to play Division III at Wisconsin-Superior),” said Thompson about her senior year. “We had some good scores this year and it was a fun season.” 

Along with some top-notch statistics in the crease, the senior said that one of her favorite memories of the year came in Forest Lake’s 1-0 upset win over Andover this past November. Thompson had a 32-save shutout and her best friend Abigail Sklavenitis had the game-winning goal in overtime. Although the Rangers might not have ended the season in the way that they wanted, there was plenty of success and solid results for all in 2025-26.

For Thompson specifically, this was arguably her best season in net so far. The 5-foot-4 goaltender originally joined the varsity roster as a freshman at Forest Lake in 2022-23 and was immediately thrown into the fire during her first season by earning the starting position in the first few games of the year before eventually splitting time 50/50 with senior Adria Haley later that winter. She then moved into the sole starting position as a sophomore and stuck with it up until her senior season.

“It was hard. The first couple of games [as a freshman], they gave them all to me because the senior goalie was dealing with a lot over the summer and she didn’t get to skate a lot so they kind of threw me into the first four games and it was pretty stressful actually. In the very first game we played Stillwater and that was when they had Josie St. Martin on the team (who is now playing Division I hockey at Minnesota Duluth) and I got lit up, but after that it was like, it can’t really get any worse,” she said jokingly about her first few games on the varsity roster. As just a 15-year-old, Thompson had a tough first four games to play as a freshman, losing contests to Stillwater, East Ridge, Centennial/Spring Lake Park and Roseville/Mahtomedi, before then earning her first official varsity win and her first varsity shutout against Northern Tier in her fifth high school game ever.

It wasn’t easy at first, but she found her footing and got better and better from then on. Haley and Thompson eventually split time in net during the second half of the 2022-23 season. Overall, 15-year-old Thompson was able to post a .910 save percentage and a 2.97 goals-against average that year - very solid numbers for a freshman who had to jump into incredibly tough games from the get-go.

After learning lots in her first season up on varsity, Thompson felt much more prepared and ready to take on the challenge of Year 2 as a sophomore.

“I worked really hard all summer and I knew what to expect that year and it was just a great year for me,” the Forest Lake goaltender said about her second year with the Rangers. The team went 11-14-1 overall, eventually losing a heartbreaking one-goal game to Anoka in the Section 7AA quarterfinals, but Thompson posted a .916 save percentage and a 2.90 goals-against average.

While her sophomore season statistics in the crease were incredibly solid, the 5-foot-4 goaltender really started to come into her own as a junior where she earned an incredible .940 save percentage with a Forest Lake team that went 15-6-6. The squad was even able to push powerhouse Andover to overtime in the Section 7AA semifinal match that season, so the Rangers were a tricky team that had been flying under the radar a bit.

“It definitely helped just being older because I wasn’t playing against people who were like almost four years older than me,” Thompson said about playing in net as an upperclassman compared to being a young 15-year-old freshman in Year 1. She also cited her summer training as something that really has helped to prepare her for high levels of hockey. She remembers going to summer training programs in the morning and then typically playing in various games at night, so she was getting a lot of ice time in to help refine her skills more and more, day after day.

After posting those eye-popping statistics her junior year, the possibility of playing college hockey at the highest level started to become more of a reality. As a kid, Thompson had always dreamed of playing at the Division I level and she remembers watching Minnesota Duluth games and cheering for the Bulldogs from time to time when her team would participate in tournaments or in games up in Northern Minnesota. Her recruiting process was a bit up and down though, which is typical for most goaltenders. She originally got a call from a college program on the very first day of the recruiting cycle for athletes in her grade level but things then tapered off from there and she was mostly having conversations with Division III programs throughout 2024-25.

After coming off of an incredible year stats-wise as a junior, Thompson eventually became connected with Head Coach Joe Grossman of Assumption University in the early months of summer. Grossman, who has now just finished up his second season as head coach of the Greyhounds, had seen Thompson at USA Hockey National Camp in the past and knew that his squad would be in need of a goalie in the future. The Minnesotan netminder then eventually took a visit out to the school, located in Worcester, Massachusetts, in July and announced her verbal commitment to the private, Catholic university on July 30, 2025.

“I am incredibly excited to announce my verbal commitment to play NCAA DI hockey at Assumption University. I want to thank God, my family, friends, and the many coaches I’ve had throughout the years. Jeremiah 29:11 #houndnation,” Thompson posted to her social media pages.

“I had kind of taken some visits at other places beforehand so I knew that basically the second I stepped on campus and a had a few more conversations with [Coach Grossman] that I was like yeah, this is where I want to play,” said the goaltender about her decision. “The big thing for me is like, obviously, being a female hockey player that you can’t play hockey forever so I care a lot about my academics and they have an engineering program partnership with Notre Dame - which for the the last couple of years I’ve known that I’ve wanted to be an engineer - so that was the first thing. I also wanted to be able to make an impact on a team and it seemed like when I was talking to other schools that they would say that I’d be the third string and I wouldn’t really ever play and I wanted to actually be a part of something, so that was available with Assumption, and I really like the small campus too, I’m not really a big city type of person and Worcester is a city but the campus is kind of tucked away, it’s only about 2000 people, so I was really attracted to that too.”

Thompson’s family was obviously very excited for her to acheive a commitment to play Division I college hockey but it’ll be a little bittersweet when she has to move to the other side of the country later this fall. The high school senior joked that it’ll give her family a good excuse to plan vacations out east now.

There will be some familiar faces out in Worcester when Thompson gets there too as there are plenty of Minnesotans who have been recruited by the Greyhounds over the past two years, including Sydney Burnevik (River Cities) and Allison Ryan (Minnetonka) who are both 2026 grads, along with Annika Eggert (Minnetonka), Alexa Van Straaten (Dodge County), Cate Fischer (Maple Grove) and Harper Wieneke (Maple Grove) who are all 2027 grads.

After earning her college commitment in the summer of 2025, Thompson went on to have a very good showing in her senior campaign with the Rangers, posting a .937 save percentage, a 1.58 goals-against average and seven shutouts. The team posted a 14-12-1 overall record before eventually losing to Grand Rapids-Greenway in the section semifinals. It seems easy to say that Thompson was clearly one of the top goaltenders in the state of Minnesota this season and one of very few Division I committed goaltenders too. Her goals-against average was top-15 in the state and her save percentage was top-10, which is an incredible statistic considering that the Rangers held a record of just over .500. Her senior season was special too considering that it was Taylor’s last varsity game playing alongside her younger sister, Lexi, who led Forest Lake in scoring in 2025-26.

“I’m obviously not the tallest, I’m only about 5’4 or 5’4 and a half on a good day, so for me what’s important is my skating and getting in a good position because if you’re not in position then it’s a little harder,” said Thompson about her style of play. “I like to work on my skating a lot so I can get where I need to be and I also think I do a pretty good job of tracking the puck.”

The 18-year-old originally started playing hockey since there were family ties to the sport. Her dad played hockey growing up and both her uncle (who played at Bethel) and grandfather (who played at Bemidji State) were goaltenders, so it just made sense for her to try things out too. Thompson started skating around age three on outdoor rinks and ponds while growing up in the Centerville/Lino Lakes area before moving to nearby Forest Lake around kindergarten/first grade and playing with the Rangers ever since.

For now, Thompson is preparing to finish up her senior year of high school. She also competes on the golf team for Forest Lake as well so that will be coming up in the next few weeks. When she’s not out on the ice in the summer, you can typically find her going out to the lake and fishing or water-tubing - all of that kind of stuff.

The Minnesotan goaltender will move out to Massachusetts later this summer and will compete with Assumption starting in the fall of 2026. The Greyhounds currently have three goaltenders on its roster in junior Jadyn Weiser (also a Minnesotan - Albertville), sophomore Leila Fournier, and freshman Maria Suarez. Weiser played a majority of minutes in 2025-26. With three current goalies on the roster along with Thompson and another possible incoming freshman, the goaltending crew could get a bit crowded for next fall but the transfer portal is currently open at the moment so moves could be made over the next few weeks.

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