The triple crown in the NHL refers to a skater that leads the league in goals, assists and points or a goalie that leads the league in wins, goals against average (GAA) and save percentage (SV%). While Kings goalie prospect Hampton Slukynsky didn’t take home this kind of triple crown, he won the more well-known triple crown via winning championships like the horses do when winning the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.
Still only 19-years-old currently, Slukynsky has already demonstrated loud and clear that he’s a total winner wherever he goes and has a track record to prove it. After going 54-5-2 in his final two seasons at Warroad High School in Minnesota, the top high school league in the country, Slukynsky graduated and went to the Fargo Force in the USHL for the 2023-24 season. There, he eventually took over the starting job, went 28-3-0 with a 1.86 GAA and .923 SV%, won the league’s Goalie of the Year Award and won the Clark Cup championship alongside his team.
Fast forward to present day and Slukynsky has just completed the third leg of that triple crown, taking home three pieces of championship hardware after winning a pair of gold medals representing the United States and a NCAA National Championship this season. Slukynsky began his collegiate career as a freshman at Western Michigan University after decommitting from Northern Michigan University earlier in 2024 due to a coaching change. Arriving in Kalamazoo in the fall of 2024 alongside his older brother Grant, who transferred from NMU to WMU during the NCAA’s annual portal opening, Slukynsky entered as the 1B goalie on a depth chart that had a three-year returning senior.
Asking National Championship winning Head Coach of the WMU Broncos Pat Ferschweiler how he handled that situation going into the season, Ferschweiler explained the process of how he brought Slukynsky into the program, raved about out how his graduate senior goalie Cameron Rowe handled the situation and how it benefited both backstoppers.
“It was a real unique situation for us,” Ferschweiler said. “Cameron Rowe had played two straight years and almost every minute of every game for us and he’d played well, frankly. The cool thing was when we told Cameron we were going to bring somebody in to challenge him for ice time this year because we needed to as [Rowe] was graduating out of the program and we need to set ourselves up for the coming year, the day we announced Hampton being signed, the first call I got was for Cameron. Frankly, I didn’t exactly know how that call was going to go. He said, ‘coach I’m calling because I want to be the first one to welcome Hampton to the team,’ and instantly then I knew we were in a great spot right away. Here’s our graduate student goaltender and started every minute and he’s welcoming the guy who is super talented. He is a great goalie with open arms. It worked out perfectly.”
Like Slukynsky did at Fargo the previous year, he traded off starts for almost the whole season. Rowe would play Friday’s and Slukynsky on Saturday’s.
“We’re going to go with the split starts until one of them cracked or showed that he had to play both games and they both played extremely well all year,” he added. “I think it helped Hampton too when we were on the road. Not having been in a lot of those buildings before, you can get the Thursday practice, Friday morning skate, Saturday morning skate and then play Saturday, so he’s real familiar with the rink by the end and had seen the atmosphere and I think it allowed him to be successful.”
When asked about the differentiating factor that led to handing Slukynsky the keys to the starting role for the remainder of the season in the final weeks of the regular season, Ferschweiler explained that it came down to the consistency that Slukynsky developed throuhgout the course of his freshman season. Young players and consistency don’t always go hand in hand, but they certainly did in this case.
“Hampton just got more consistent, more confident and you could just feel him separate himself a little bit at the end of the season,” Ferschweiler added. “We had known all along but by the time the playoffs came around we were going have one guy that we’d go with. Hampton proved to be the guy at that time and certainly we were rewarded with tremendous play from him, not just at the end but all season long. It resulted in our school’s first ever national championship in any sport; the kid’s a winner.”
On route to the program’s first national championship, Slukynsky freshman stats were as follows: a 19-5-1 record with a .922 SV% and a 1.90 GAA (6th ranked nationally) while finishing the season on a 10-game winning streak. Going up against the nation’s best teams during that 10-game winning streak, Slukynsky’s averaged a 2.00 GAA during his 10-game winning streak and allowed more than two goals just twice, while limiting his opponents to a goal or less twice as well.
Reflecting on his national championship winning season, Slukynsky spoke about his adjustment period at the start, but how he felt comfortable once he went through that adjustment process.
“Playing in college hockey in the NCHC was a little bit of an adjustment for start and one thing that helped me a lot is the college schedule,” he said. “You don’t start playing games until the start of October, so you basically get four weeks of practice time. I think I just made a lot of the adjustments in practice. Getting used to the feeling, skill, harder shots and faster game. We had a pre-exhibition game against the NTDP [National Team Development Program] and that helped me acclimate. We played at Ferris State the first weekend of the season and that felt good. Then, we played at Boston College in my second game and that was kind of the ‘welcome to college’ moment [after allowing four goals in a loss]. Going against their skill, I thought it was good and like I said, anytime you go up a higher level of competition there’s going be an adjustment. I felt I handled it well and just kept riding it from there.”
While the journey and accomplishment of winning the NCAA National Championship as the starting goaltender at Western Michigan had his fingerprints on the outcome the most of the three championships, it was actually the second leg in quest for the triple crown.
In case you may have forgotten, Slukynsky’s first hoisting of a cup this season came when he won the gold medal as a participant on Team USA at the 2025 World Junior Championships in the first week of 2025. After going 2-0-0 in the tournament with a 1.50 GAA and a .933 SV% in route to raising the championship trophy, little did he know at the time that, that would be his first of two gold medals on the season.
“On the Sunday after the national championship game, my advisor told me that my name was in the conversation and that there was a chance that I could be that the third guy on the Team USA 2025 World Championship team if no NHL guys took the role and obviously being in college, I jumped at the opportunity to be able to come over here [to Denmark and Sweden] with all these [NHL] guys,” Slukynsky explained during the midst of the tournament just over a week ago.
Given a chance to gain more exposure and experience alongside many of the NHL’s best players, Slukynsky did earn the third goalie role for Team USA and joined a goalie room with Boston Bruins star goalie Jeremy Swayman and the Seattle Kraken’s starter Joey Daccord to round out the trio of backstopping representatives.
While Slukynsky did not appear in any of the tournament games, the Minnesota native’s time around the team, on the ice during pre-tournament action, during practice and just day-to-day living was an invaluable experience. Slukynsky did compete in game action against Germany in a tune-up pre-tournament tilt just prior to group play and made seven saves on nine shots, providing plenty of lessons in preparation of what will hopefully be just the beginning of him facing NHL talent. Ultimately helping Team USA to a 5-2 victory in the game, the brief on-ice experience has already taught him many lessons.
“I played in a pre-tournament game against Germany and it was a little fast because it’s obviously faster than what I’m used to in college,” he said. “Every level you go up you must learn from those who have been there. The same thing happened for me in college this past season. Just learn from the older guys who’ve been here been here before.”
Having the immeasurable opportunity to spend time with, learn from and ask questions to both Swayman and Daccord and Team USA’s goalie coach Thomas Speer who just finished his third year as the San Jose Sharks goalie coach, Slukynsky has already made slight adjustments to his game to improve his form.
“In working with Speer, we’ve kind of already tweaked a couple things that help me stay more relaxed and calmer. Things like tweaking my stance which helps me move easier and not get too bent over or too stuck, so just making the adjustments like relaxing and being able to move easier are some pieces to my game that I’ve been working on these past weeks. It will help me because the game is so much faster at this level, and you always have to be improving. There are always things you can work on to give you a better chance to make saves.”
With Speer’s assistance from a technique standpoint point, Swayman and Daccord provided a first-hand example of what it takes to be a successful NHL-esqe goalie.
“You see how hard they work every day and in practice. Just being able to to practice with Jeremy [Swayman] and Joey [Daccord] the past couple weeks has been good for me, and you just learn how dialed in they are on and off the ice. The work they put it on their bodies and just working out, training, warming up.”
Already taking home the technical adjustments, lessons and experiences from a month-long IIHF World Championship Tournament surrounded by NHLers, Slukynsky and his teammates also brought home another gold medal, snapping a 92-year IIHF World Championship drought.
In one more moment of reflection on the season that he put together over the past few years, Slukynsky took a bit of time to see the bigger picture. And that was pretty staggering, when you think about it.
“Yeah, I soaked it in a little bit after the Western Michigan season, winning the national championship I reflected and it’s pretty cool that in the last year I was able to be a part of a team that won the Clark Cup in Fargo in the USHL and to be able to win the gold medal at the World Junior Championships this winter and then a National Championship is something I don’t take for granted. It’s not very often that you’re on winning teams like that, so to be able to win three championships in those big tournaments like that…… you just have to look back on it and just realize how fortunate you were to be on some good teams and just be able to help those teams win.”
Still not satisfied with where his game is currently at, Slukynsky to no surprise has a handful of goals heading into the summer of 2025.
“Yeah, I think I still have a lot to improve on. I had a good year and everything with team success and individual success, but you can always get better. So, just working on all the goalie things, just working on improving my skating, getting more crisp, staying up, staying big. There are things that I need to improve on to continue to get better. That’ll just help me make my life easier when I’m in the net.”
