Sports
The old guard
Matthew Semisch
11/18/2014
When asked how he thinks his Bottineau-Rugby (B-R) hockey team will do this season, head coach David Hoff is somewhat vague in his answer.
There’s a perfectly good reason for that: He doesn’t know.
When you look up and down the Braves’ roster for the new high school hockey season, it becomes tough to blame him. The Braves are without seven seniors from a 2013-14 campaign in which B-R finished with a 14-10-0 record.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens here because we are very young,” Hoff said. “I can see that in our first few days of practice already, and we have a handful of guys who have played a lot, but we’ve graduated a lot of guys the past few years who also played a ton for us, so it seems like we have a lot of new faces this year.”
One former Brave who racked up plenty of playing time is Riley Monson, B-R’s starting goaltender last season. Vying to take Monson’s place as B-R’s No. 1 netminder this season are junior Ethan Clements and Kaden Thorsell, a freshman from Newburg.
Clements, who hails from Rugby, only appeared in three games last year but won two of them.
On top of the goaltending situation, there’s an even larger elephant in the room. Gone from the Braves’ roster is Harrison Aide, a do-everything forward who led the state in scoring in both his junior and senior seasons with B-R.
Aide, now playing with the Bismarck Bobcats of the North American Hockey League (NAHL), was a machine in his time with the Braves. In his final season for B-R, he scored 52 goals and picked up 40 assists, good enough to see him win the
“Mr. Hockey” award as the best high school player in the state.
Back for one more go-round is senior forward Luke Amsbaugh. Amsbaugh finished second on the team - and second in the state - in scoring last season with 47 goals and 38 assists.
Amsbaugh is one of only four seniors on the Braves’ roster this season. Forwards Noah Grant and Hunter Haakenson and defenseman Braden Pewe are the other three.
Grant finished third on the team in scoring last season with 10 goals and 33 assists.
After that, though, there was a significant dropoff. The next-highest returning player on the list, junior Austyn Lorenz, finished last season with 12 points.
That drop suggests that secondary scoring might be an issue this time around for the Braves. Hoff doesn’t expect that to come right away, but he hopes that it can arrive once the younger players on the team get acclimated to the varsity level.
“I just don’t know if we have enough kids that are skilled enough to be there yet,” Hoff said, “And that’s going to be the real tough part. As much as we’d have loved to spread out our offensive production a little bit more last year, we have some kids who are very, very skilled and others who need time to develop.
“We’re going to roll three lines (of forwards), but my guess is we won’t be able to get a ton of scoring from all three lines,” he continued. “We don’t have the depth to get to three lines of scoring, and I don’t see that happening quickly, but from the standpoint of getting younger kids experience, that’s something we have to do.”
B-R finished its 2013-14 regular season with 31 points, 12 behind eventual West Region and state tournament champion Bismarck High.
The Braves’ 2014-15 season starts next Tuesday on the road at Devils Lake. B-R will host Jamestown on Dec. 5 and then Dickinson the following day.