18 hours Ago
Lori Borgen’s nerves heightened as she pulled her Subaru Outback into a rink in Omaha. She and her 17-year-old son, Will, were nearly six hours south of their home in Moorhead, Minnesota, and Lori was out of her comfort zone. Back in Moorhead, dropping Will at the rink felt like dropping him off with family.
Here, at a USHL camp with the Omaha Lancers, they knew no one. Advertisement Lori’s maternal instincts fluttered as her son got out of the car, grabbed his hockey bag and walked into the building. This was long before he was an NHL regular or even an emerging college player at St.
Cloud State. His mom wasn’t used to seeing him all alone in a new place. She was worried, even if he wasn’t.
“He’s just going to get annihilated here,” she thought. But when she picked him up at day’s end, Will was fine. He was the next day, too.
And when Lori attended a scrimmage later in the camp, then-Los Angeles Kings scout Tony Gasparini approached her. “Your son is going to be getting a lot of attention,” he said. As Lori watched Will play that day, she was struck by how capable he looked.
He wasn’t just a good high school player in Moorhead. He was thriving against kids from all over. It’s what Borgen does.
He fits. Now 28, he’s doing the same with the New York Rangers, who targeted him in a December trade with the Seattle Kraken and then were impressed enough to sign him to a five-year, $20.5 million extension a month later.
The Rangers were in the midst of their 4-15-0 tailspin when they acquired Borgen, who plays a simple, defensive-minded game. The team has since stabilized, with the new defenseman playing his part, often in less-than-flashy ways in a second-pair role. In the final minute of Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, opposing forward Kevin Hayes had the puck on his stick with what appeared to be a vacated net in front of him.
Borgen fell to the ice and blocked Hayes’ shot, preserving the Rangers lead. Goaltender Igor Shesterkin gave Borgen a hug as he got to his feet. “We’re lucky to have him on our team,” Shesterkin said.
“He does a lot of dirty things out there — dirty in the sense of blocking shots and playing physical and sticking up for teammates and (being) competitive,” coach Peter Laviolette added. “That’s just an example of one of them.” The 6-foot-3 defenseman offers stability — something the Rangers have craved this season and will need going forward.
Borgen’s first experience on the ice came because he was too young to ski. When he was a toddler, his family was on a trip in Bozeman, Montana. Will stayed back with a cousin while his older siblings hit the slopes.
The cousin took him skating, and his interest was born. It carried into the next winter, when his mom took him to skating lessons. Lori, who in the 1970s was on the first girls hockey team in Fargo, North Dakota, watched her son stand up on his skates, fall down and promptly repeat the process.
Advertisement That didn’t deter his confidence. He beamed when Lori got him off the ice. “I was real good, Mom!” he told her.
Before long, that was true. When he began playing organized hockey around kindergarten, he emerged as one of the better players his age in Moorhead, a city of 45,000 on the border of North Dakota. By the end of high school, he was skating in a summer group with then-NHLer Matt Cullen, who is also from Moorhead.
Nowadays, Borgen — the elder statesman of Moorhead pros — organizes the group. “You never had to really light a fire under him,” said Jon Ammerman, who coached Borgen at Moorhead High. “He for sure separated himself with how hard he competed.
” Hockey wasn’t his only competitive outlet. He played on the Moorhead soccer team throughout high school, even though it led to him missing some Minnesota Elite League hockey games in the fall. Sometimes, if Moorhead led by a few goals, his soccer coaches would let him leave games early so he could drive across the state to the Twin Cities in time for a hockey game.
He also tried out for the tennis team his sophomore spring and made varsity doubles. He had never played the sport competitively but gave it a whirl and made friends in different groups in the process. As has been the case throughout his career, he jelled with his new teammates.
His mom calls it the coolest thing he’s ever done. “Some might say the Olympics,” she said, referring to his inclusion on the 2018 U.S.
roster. “But I disagree.” Garrett Raboin, an assistant at St.
Cloud State during Borgen’s three years there, said the defenseman’s involvement in multiple sports is “really a part of who he is.” The coach saw it in both his athleticism and competitiveness. Borgen also believes it kept him from getting burnt out on hockey.
“Kids nowadays just play one sport and focus too hard,” he said. “You can probably become a better player if you do that, but I’d rather play other things because I think that’s beneficial too, just being athletic.” Advertisement Hockey became Borgen’s sole focus after his senior soccer season.
He committed to St. Cloud in the fall, then had a dominant final year on the Moorhead hockey team. When the season ended, he left to join the Lancers, who were still playing, in the USHL.
Ammerman assumed he’d spend the rest of that season then all of the next one in Omaha before heading to St. Cloud. Borgen did, too.
His stint, though, was far shorter than expected. Raboin is used to players having a learning curve when they head to the USHL. They can’t always immediately make the same type of impact they do in high school.
Borgen, though, didn’t look out of place when he joined the Lancers. “As the level increased, so did his skating,” Raboin said. “Everything translated quickly.
” Bob Motzko, then the St. Cloud head coach, immediately noticed Borgen’s athleticism, length, skating and toughness. He looked like he could handle the next level, and St.
Cloud had an opening on its roster. Motzko asked Borgen if he wanted to fill it, and the defenseman happily obliged. After 21 games, his USHL tenure was over.
“We were so high on him, we made the decision, and it was the right one,” said Motzko, now the head coach at Minnesota. “That was probably the greatest thing ever for me,” Borgen said. The first time Raboin saw Borgen in a college setting, any questions about his ability to contribute at that level vanished.
As a freshman, he could already skate with the best players in the country, Raboin said. He had a plus-17 rating that season and helped St. Cloud reach an NCAA regional.
By that point, he was an NHL draft pick, selected by the Buffalo Sabres in the fourth round in 2015. As the Kings scout had promised Lori Borgen at the Omaha camp in 2014, people had taken notice. USA Hockey had, too, choosing him for its World Juniors team in the middle of his freshman year.
He teamed up with the likes of Auston Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk to win a bronze medal at the tournament, which he called the fastest-paced hockey he’d experienced at that point. He held his own, though; he played every game for the U.S.
, and Raboin called him “one of the most pleasant surprises on that team.” “For him to be able to go from that — a high school varsity soccer player to (in) one year playing in the World Juniors — that’s pretty incredible,” Ammerman said. Borgen’s St.
Cloud teammates describe him as living a simple life off the ice. Jimmy Schuldt, his freshman roommate, remembered him moving into their St. Cloud dorm with only a few shirts and a couple of pairs of pants.
They’d go to discount movies on Tuesdays — “We were true college kids that would definitely take advantage of those deals,” Schuldt said — and played plenty of Mario Kart. He was goofy and easy to get along with. Advertisement “Always keeps the mood light,” said Tampa Bay’s Nick Perbix, who didn’t overlap with Borgen but has gotten to know him through St.
Cloud alumni events. On the ice, though, was a different story. No one, Motzko said, wanted to go against Borgen in drills.
“He’s just got a nasty streak, and he brought it every day,” Motzko said. “It gave us an edge, and it made everybody else competitive. .
.. He makes your team tougher.
” Borgen had just gotten to the Kraken team hotel on Dec. 18 in Chicago when general manager Ron Francis called him in for a face-to-face meeting. Francis had been in talks with Rangers general manager Chris Drury over the past few days, and the two executives had finalized a deal shortly after Seattle’s charter flight to Chicago landed.
Francis told Borgen, whose 28th birthday was the next day, that he was headed to the Rangers as part of a package for forward Kaapo Kakko. “There’s never a good time for this,” Francis said afterward. “You’re wishing him a happy birthday and a merry Christmas and you’re telling him he’s been traded.
” Borgen had mixed emotions at the trade. He had solidified himself as an NHL regular with the Kraken, who took him from Buffalo in the 2021 expansion draft. His first NHL goal came in a Kraken sweater, and he got his first taste of the playoffs with the club, upsetting Colorado in a 2023 first-round series.
Borgen called that playoff run the most fun he’s had playing hockey. He made close friends in Seattle, including Matty Beniers, his roommate for 2 1/2 seasons. But Borgen said he also wanted a change of scenery.
Seattle signed top-four defenseman Brandon Montour over the summer, and Borgen’s playing time dipped to just over 15 minutes a game. New York offered a chance at more opportunity — he’s averaged 18:45 a night since the trade — plus Madison Square Garden was his favorite rink as a visiting player. When Jack Ahcan, one of Borgen’s teammates and close friends at St.
Cloud, heard about the trade, he wondered how he’d handle New York. Borgen called himself a country boy in college because he grew up on a farm, and Manhattan is a far different place than Moorhead or St. Cloud.
Plenty of Rangers players live in Connecticut or Westchester, but Borgen decided to live in the city. He hadn’t signed an extension at that point, so he wanted to give New York a proper try while he had the chance. He’s found he enjoys people-watching and how there’s always something going on.
He’s been trying various bagel spots — Mike’s is one of his go-tos — and likes going to the West Village for dinner. Driving is easier in Moorhead, but otherwise he’s enjoyed city life. Advertisement “He’s a chameleon,” Raboin said.
“He’s going to enjoy New York and certainly the fan base there is going to love him.” “Will’s such a creature of habit,” his mom added. “Once he gets his little path of what he’s going to do, he’s going to be fine wherever he’s at.
” That’s what he does. On the ice or in the city, he just fits. (Top photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images).
