ST. PAUL, Minn. — Taylor Heise and her Minnesota Frost teammates had the time of their lives celebrating the inaugural Professional Women’s Hockey League championship throughout the summer, taking the Walter Cup with them wherever they could.

“If someone hasn’t seen it,” Heise said, “they just weren’t in the right place.”

One of those outings was to the Minnesota State Fair, where the sterling silver trophy posed for pictures, saw the sights and even served as a receptacle for serving the group a margarita during a four-hour tour on a August afternoon.

“I had scrapes up and down my arm,” Heise said, flashing a mischievous smile: “That was my offseason lifting.”’

Goalie Nicole Hensley took the cup back to her native Colorado, including a visit to her favorite concert venue, the venerable Red Rocks amphitheater. Shipping from player to player was meticulously arranged via UPS so everyone had a turn.

“It was pretty cool,” Hensley said. “Door to door service.”

The entire team has more to carry when the PHWL’s second season begins on Nov. 30, with new logos and nicknames for every club after branding was largely skipped over in the hasty launch a year ago. Winning a title breeds fiercer competition, particularly in a six-team league with so much familiarity between players from their college and international careers.

“We have a spot on our back,” said Heise, who led the team with five goals in 10 playoff games. “Everyone’s going to look at us a specific way.”

There’s been no shortage of attention for this team. One week after the dramatic win over Boston in the finals last spring, Minnesota general manager Natalie Darwitz — an icon for women’s hockey in this hockey-rich state — was removed from her post by the PHWL. She was later replaced by Melissa Caruso. Ken Klee, who took over on the fly when the initial hire Charlie Burggraf resigned a week before the season began, was retained as head coach. The Athletic, citing unnamed sources within the league, reported there was a rift between Darwitz and Klee and thus between certain players who were supporters of each.

“For me it’s just about getting our group back together,” Klee said on Thursday after practice. “We’re focusing on the future. Pro hockey things happen, some unfortunate things and some things out of our control, and we’re just really looking forward and excited to get the season going.”

Neither PHWL officials nor Frost leaders or players have been willing to speak publicly about the situation.

“Those were league decisions,” said Frost forward Kendall Coyne Schofield, who was second on the team in scoring last season. “We’re here to play hockey.”

Whatever issues might’ve bubbled up in the aftermath of the championship were either nonexistent or tamped down in the leadup to the title.

“We had an unbelievable locker room. We had an unbelievable group, an unbelievable staff,” Klee said. “If we didn’t have those things, we wouldn’t have won.”

The PWHL is a centralized league that owns all six franchises and is financed by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter, with an eye on expansion for 2025-26. The Frost have relished the opportunity to lean into their new name and wear the new threads featuring several shades of purple and the “F” logo with icicle-like points on the lettering.

“Last year was a lot about building our league, building up our fan base, having all the little girls have the best time,” Heise said. “Now I think we can focus on that as well as focus on the ice and everything that we can do there. We want to bring a better team out every single time we come out there.”

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The investigation into the violent death of a Minnesota pastor in Angola has taken another shocking twist, with police now saying that the pastor’s wife was having an affair with the couple’s security guard, and she then offered the guard and two others $50,000 to slay her spouse.

Beau Shroyer, 44, a former pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, was found stabbed to death in the African country on Oct. 25. Days later it was revealed that his wife Jackie had been arrested in connection with his death, although the exact circumstances of the nature of his death were scant. 

Now police in Angola say they have arrested two of the alleged hitmen, while a third is on the run, according to the Angola Press Agency, a public news agency in Angola. The couple and their five children moved to Angola in 2021 to become missionaries.

WIFE OF PASTOR KILLED ON AFRICAN MISSION ARRESTED IN CONNECTION WITH DEATH: ‘GIANT SHOCK’

According to the report, the Angolan Criminal Investigation Service says that Jackie was having an affair with Bernadino Elias, 24, who worked at the family’s home as a security guard, and she was upset that the family’s mission was ending and didn’t want to leave.

In a sinister plot, she paid the trio, all of whom had prior criminal records, $50,000 to slay her husband, according to the report. 

The diabolical scheme involved the three men hiring a car and pretending the vehicle was having trouble in a remote area in the town of Thienjo, Palanca.

They called Beau, who arrived in his jeep, and the three suspects then stabbed him to death, per the report. 

Police released an image of Elias with his alleged accomplice, Isalino Kayoo, 23, outside a police station. 

They were pictured standing in front of the blue rental car and Beau’s white SUV. A picture from inside Beau’s white SUV shows a bloodstained front seat and binoculars.

Police say they recovered an American-made knife that had been gifted to Elias at the scene. The knife was displayed on a table along with cash and a cell phone. 

Manuel Halaiwa, the CIS Superintendent of Criminal Investigation, says that the motives for the crime were “strong suspicions of a romantic relationship between the person who ordered the crime and her accomplice, the guard and the couple’s residence,” per The Angola Press Agency.

MINNESOTA MISSIONARY, A FATHER OF 5, KILLED IN ‘ACT OF VIOLENCE’ IN ANGOLA

Minnesota pastor Beau Shroyer, who moved his family to Africa to spread Christianity, was killed in an “act of violence” there on Friday, according to a notice from Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. (Lakes Area Vineyard Church, left, Beau Shroyer via Facebook, right.)

The State Department confirmed Beau’s death to Fox News Digital but was unable to provide further details due to privacy considerations. 

“We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased,” a State Department spokesperson said. 

Beau previously described the area that the family moved to as a “remote bush village” with no electricity, sewer or water systems. In a Facebook post on the day before his death, Shroyer wrote that the Nyneka people they were serving “are among the most marginalized people groups in Angola,” after he came across a young person called “Mauricio” who was walking to school nearly two hours before class started. 

Shroyer worked for the Detroit Lakes Police Department in 2013 before becoming a real estate agent in the area.

In a previous press release, Lakes Area Vineyard Church Lead Pastor Troy Easton said that the religious community was in shock to hear about Beau’s death and Jackie’s subsequent arrest, 

He said that the missionaries there — SIM USA and SIM Angola — were caring for the couple’s five children. It is unclear if the children are still in Africa.

David Dorman, who worked with Beau Shroyer in real estate for years before Shroyer decided to leave for Africa, tells Fox News Digital that Beau was “a wonderful person. 

The inside of Shroyer’s SUV shows a bloodstained seat (ANGOP)

“Not sure I’ve ever met a more selfless human,” Dorman told Fox News Digital. “The courage it took to take this leap to begin with was something I’ve admired for years. He loved people and genuinely cared about those less privileged. It’s been a giant shock to the core to see this unfold this way.”

Dorman said Beau’s passion to help those less well-off was prevalent even in the real estate industry, where the pair worked on several complex and difficult transactions together.

“Beau was special. Beau went the extra mile for clients… He was a true partner and loved what he did. His attitude was infectious and I genuinely loved working with him,” said Dorman, who added he would often drive for three hours to meet Beau for closings and have a meal together afterward. 

“He was one of the true ‘good guys’ in real estate. This is far less common than you might think. I’ve been doing this for 13 years and he stood out for all the right reasons. A true servant in a sea of snakes. 100% a client advocate. The lengths I watched him go to for his clients was something of legend. No one went the extra mile more than him.”

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Pastor Beau Shroyer in a jeep with children sitting on the vehicle’s roof. (Beau Shroyer via Facebook)

Beau would give regular email updates about their mission, highlighting the ups and downs, some of which Dorman shared with Fox News Digital.

“We are currently living in a house in the missionary complex in Lubango. It’s a big change from living in the middle of the neighborhood Senhora Do Monte,” an email update from April reads. He said the family at the time was “settled in and loving it,” and also mentioned they were returning to Detroit Lakes last summer.

A video online shows the couple speaking of their mission at one of those gatherings. They then returned to Angola before the Oct. 25 incident unfolded.