It might’ve always been in the cards that a kid named Lincoln from the Omaha, Neb., area who went on to play junior hockey in the central part of the state would end up playing college hockey locally too.
Omaha freshman forward Lincoln Hjelm didn’t always think about his career that way, but now that things have panned out as they have, he wishes he did grow up with that twinkle in his eye.
Growing up in Gretna, a suburb on Omaha’s far western edge, Hjelm played Triple-A hockey for two separate Omaha programs before he attended and played for the Northstar Christian Academy in Alexandria, Minn. After that, he played one season with the Langley Rivermen of the British Columbia Hockey League before returning home(ish), two and a half hours west of Gretna, in Kearney to play for the United States Hockey League’s Tri-City Storm.
And now, after joining a small crew of Omaha-born hockey players to have played NCAA home games there — where his family lives is generally considered part of Gretna but has an Omaha mailing address — Hjelm is delighted to have picked up an offer from the Mavericks, a program that has been around for 30 years but is still one of the newer teams in NCAA Division I men’s hockey.
And its university has come a long way in those decades, working to shed its former local reputation as a commuter college.
“When I was getting recruited, I kept all my options open,” Hjelm said. “Growing up in the Omaha area, I went to a ton of UNO games and a ton of (Omaha) Lancers games (in the USHL), and the thing back then was that I thought Lancers games were cooler, but as I grew up, I realized that UNO’s was a higher level and that those games were actually way better to watch. I used to think that the Lancers were a professional team, and they have great production, don’t get me wrong and whatnot, but once you play at a higher level and go to juniors, you realize that college is the end goal or the next stepping stone.
“I also realized that UNO is pretty sweet,” he continued. “I went on a visit and learned more about it, and I kind of kicked myself for not having a huge dream of playing at UNO, but it was good because it came to fruition, that it kind of just happened. It wasn’t ‘UNO or bust’, and it kind of shows how good UNO is that I still committed.
“I think it still has a bit of the same reputation with a lot of people, and I have a ton of friends who just go to class at UNO, and my mom said something similar when we were getting shown the campus. She slipped up to one of the coaches and said, ‘Forgive me for saying this, but when I was growing up here, UNO wasn’t seen as a nice place to go,’ but they’ve made so many steps to be recognized more on a national level. It’s cool to see, and they’re going all-in.”
And just as the University of Nebraska at Omaha has grown, so has hockey in its city and Hjelm has been a part of that both in and away from UNO’s program. He currently works one-on-one with a local student who plays for Millard West, another school in the city’s far western edge, in Nebraska’s non-sanctioned club high school hockey league. The player attends Bellevue West, however, across the metro area.
“I’ve seen the club kids that play for the high schools or whatever and it’s not amazing by any means,” Hjelm said, and understandably so when high school hockey isn’t under the umbrella of the Nebraska School Activities Association. “I’ve actually kind of followed it, though, because from being in Tri-City, the Kearney team there has been really good for that league because they get all the good players in that area instead of them going to Lincoln Jr. Stars or anything like that. They have their championship game at Ralston (at the Lancers’ home), though, and when they’re playing a Creighton Prep or some team like that, there’s a full student section and that’s pretty cool.
“I don’t think anything could ever be on the Minnesota (high school hockey) level, but it is cool that they have a league for that and that the schools are represented.”
It helps that hockey-specific training is easier to find in the Omaha area that it was not long ago.
“For instance, now there’s NXT Level, a summer training program that first started in the COVID summer and it’s been usually where the best players train in the summer,” Hjelm said. “It’s pretty big-time. A couple USHL guys, a couple Division I guys train there and they train all sorts of ages, but there’s also a ton of different camps and 3-on-3 leagues, just stuff I didn’t have.
“When I was coming up, it was either that you don’t do anything, you go to stick-and-puck or you do this regular skate in the summer or you’re only skating with your team in this year. One-on-one lessons and stuff like that weren’t available, but now there’s much more supplemental growth stuff happening.”
Hjelm is working toward a business degree (fourth-wall break: this article was written by an Omaha native and a Secondary Education graduate from UNO, and hockey players there tend to gravitate toward the university’s impressive business school). Hjelm believes the Mavericks can compete at the top of the NCHC this season and over the rest of his time with the team. As for what’s going on around him, specifically in the area where he grew up, he hopes to see hockey keep making steps.
“I can completely see a rink being built out west at some point,” he said. “Everything’s at least 20 minutes away with traffic in terms of ice from where I’m from, but it’s not too far and Omaha already has a ton of rinks for the size of the city. Despite it not being really a hockey state or hockey town as such, available to the public there’s five or six sheets in town.
“I can see Omaha hockey growing further, and I know a ton of kids out west who play hockey,” Hjelm continued. “A rink in West Omaha would be really awesome to grow the game here.”