The Sartell native’s hard work and perseverance has started to pay off. He originally started his junior hockey career with the Granite City Lumberjacks of the NA3HL.

ODESSA, Texas — Deciding to play junior hockey as a goaltender isn’t something that’s for the faint of heart. Chances are, you’re going to get cut from a few teams and traded a few times, and if you can handle all of that along with the pressure of performing night in and night out then maybe, just maybe, you have a shot of earning a college commitment. 

Quentin Sigurdson, originally from Sartell, Minnesota, made the decision to leave his high school team and pursue junior hockey full time in 2021-22, forgoing his senior season. He earned a spot with the nearby Granite City Lumberjacks of the NA3HL and routinely battled with two other guys for the starting position. 

Sigurdson performed well that year in the Tier III junior hockey league. He posted a .925 save percentage and a 1.48 goals-against average and earned the most time-on-ice out of any of the other goaltenders on the roster. By the time playoffs came around, Sigurdson was the go-to guy. The Lumberjacks were a top team in the NA3HL that season and made it all the way to the Fraser Cup championship game in 2022 before ultimately falling to the Rochester Grizzlies, a team that was backed by now-Division I Minnesota Golden Gopher, Zach Wiese.

“The coaches there were awesome and we had a really good goalie coach,” he said about his time with Granite City. “They really helped me transition into junior hockey.” 

Although he enjoyed his one-year stint with the Lumberjacks, Sigurdson was looking to advance up to the Tier II junior hockey level in the NAHL for the 2022-23 season. He wound up signing a tender with the Maine Nordiques and went out to the East Coast program after making the team’s training camp roster that offseason.

It can be a very tough task for athletes to advance up from the NA3HL to the NAHL and only a handful of competitors are able to successfully make the leap each year. Sigurdson faced some adversity early on in the 2022-23 season as he went out to Maine’s camp and was told the team was going with a different guy. It would’ve been easy for the Sartell netminder to go back to NA3, but he instead persisted on finding a spot somewhere in the NAHL.

“It was kind of like a ‘well, shoot’ moment because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I got told I wasn’t going to be on the [Maine] team on Friday … and then on Saturday I was sitting around and a bunch of people were trying to help me find a spot and I got a call from Odessa,” he said. 

The Odessa Jackalopes of the NAHL originally had a goaltender they wanted on their roster but that guy got called up to the USHL, so they just so happened to have an extra roster spot available.

“I got on a plane that Sunday and then their training camp started on Monday, so I just went from one training camp right into another and kind of got tossed right into it.” 

Quentin Sigurdson of the Odessa Jackalopes gets mentally prepared for a game while standing in the tunnel.Contributed / Danne Braden Photography / @dbpsports

Fortunately for Sigurdson, he then officially made the team after impressing at the training camp. He experienced a bit of whiplash though thinking he was originally going to play an entire season of junior hockey in Lewiston, Maine, and instead wound up playing in Odessa, Texas. The Minnesota native had never been to Texas, so the difference in weather and the surrounding outdoor environment was quite a bit different than what he was used to back home — but in a good way. Odessa is a city of about 115,000 people and is about a four- or five-hour drive from metropolitan areas such as Dallas, San Antonio and Ciudad Juárez (Mexico).

Sigurdson saw some action in net that season in 2022-23 but was mainly the backup to starter Gergely Orosz, a 6-foot-3 goaltender from Hungary. Sigurdson posted a .909 save percentage that year as Odessa’s No. 2 guy but he eventually earned the starting spot in 2023-24 now that Orosz is off to play Division I at Alaska Anchorage.

The now 20-year-old worked hard in the offseason to put in the work, both mentally and physically, so that he could make his final year of junior hockey his best one yet. 

“I’ve put a lot of hard work in over the summer and everything is kind of clicking right now,” he said. “I think I’m in a good mental state where I’m just calm, confident, and I can give my team the confidence to go out and win if they see me playing well. “

Sigurdson is now the go-to guy in Odessa in 2023-24 and has had a hot start to the season with a current .939 save percentage. He started to garner a bit of interest from Division I programs after appearing in the NAHL Showcase in September. Schools like Air Force and Army started discussions with the Minnesotan but as his season progressed and his numbers got better and better he eventually had schools like Maine and Northeastern reach out. 

After some time and consideration, Sigurdson officially committed to Northeastern University on Nov. 12. 

“I am excited and honored to announce my commitment to play Division 1 hockey and further my education at Northeastern University! I would like to thank God, my family, friends, coaches, teammates, and everyone that has supported me along the way,” he posted to his social media accounts. 

“Northeastern just seemed like the best fit for me, both education and hockey-wise,” he said about his choice. Northeastern is private research university based in Boston that has over 15,000 enrolled undergraduate students. 

“They’re almost Ivy League-level in education. I was like ‘wow, this is a crazy good school with crazy good hockey’ and it was such a good combination, which is something that is really important to me.” 

Quentin Sigurdson of the Odessa Jackalopes plays the puck during a game.Contributed / Danne Braden Photography / @dbpsports

The Huskies have a good recent track record of developing talented netminders as well, such as the 2022 and 2023 Mike Richter award-winner Devon Levi, who is now with the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres. That’s obviously something that stuck out to a young goalie like Sigurdson.

The 6-foot-2 netminder will spend the rest of the season in Odessa and will head to Northeastern next fall. The Jackalopes are currently sitting in seventh place out of nine teams in the NAHL South Division as of mid-November. Now that he’s committed to play Division I hockey, there’s less pressure on Sigurdson’s shoulders to impress coaches and scouts night in and night out.

“I can just kind of relax and go play, I don’t have to worry about any of the other stuff. I’m just gonna focus on my game out on the ice,” he said. “I think what I’m best at in net is just having a solid structure and staying calm and confident.” 

Sigurdson isn’t quite set on what he’ll major in yet in college but is considering something like engineering. The Minnesota native is the second youngest of four boys in his family and his older brother, Talon, is a freshman forward this year at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. When he’s not playing hockey, you can find him playing golf in the nice weather in Odessa or learning to play pickleball with some of his NAHL teammates.