Sports

Bottineau-Rugby Braves have mix of experience and youth

By Tyler Ohmann

11/19/2013

After a strong 2012-13 campaign that fizzled at the West Region Tournament, the Bottineau-Rugby (BR) Braves look to bounce back this season.

The season, which starts tonight, will see a lot of new faces on the ice for the Braves, who graduated five seniors from a year ago, including second-leading scorer Cody Longie and starter Wyatt Johnson.

However, that wasn’t all they lost. They also lost some depth, which is going to be replaced by youth.

“That’s where we’ve really got a lot of younger guys that are just going to have to grow into that spot a little bit,” said Bottineau head coach David Hoff. “Defensemen-wise we just have to find a couple more guys for some depth, because we have a couple guys that we can move around, a Braden Pewe, a Andrew Hill, guys who played forward, but can play either way for us.”

BR, who takes on Devils Lake at 7:30 p.m. tonight in Bottineau, does however return some key players. Including junior forward Luke Amsbaugh and of course the leading scorer in the state last season Harrison Aide. Aide finished with 90 points (34 goals, 56 assists) for the Braves a year ago, easily tops in all of North Dakota Class A hockey.

“When you take a nucleus of eight or nine guys that played a lot, so I think that part is good,” Hoff said. “It’s just that we don’t have a lot of experience, because if you look on a given night you’ll typically play 14 or 15 guys, we have got to find five or six guys who can get a little experience.”

BR also returns senior goaltender Riley Monson, who started all 23 games last season for the 15-7-1 Braves.

The Braves also have another goalie in sophomore Ethan Clements from Rugby, which Hoff notes will make things easier for the Braves this year.

“It’s kind of nice to have a couple goaltenders as well, and it makes practices nice,” Hoff said.

In total the Braves are made up of 15 players from Bottineau, five from Rugby and three from Rolette.

The players have all begun to try and become more cohesive in the past couple of weeks’ practices, and Hoff has seen a lot of improvement from the younger guys.

“I think that in a week and half our younger guys have gotten so much better already,” Hoff said. “In eight practices they’ve come a long ways.”

Other key returners with playing time from last year for the Braves will be: seniors Andrew Hill, Cody Bedlion and Nigel Hageness and juniors Noah Grant and Braden Pewe.

As far as where the Braves, who finished fourth in the regular season in the West Region last year with 31 points, will end up this year could go either way according to Hoff.

Hoff said that Bismarck, Bismarck Century and Minot will be tough as always, as will a strong Dickinson squad, but otherwise it is wide open competition.

“You have to like our chances with the guys that we have coming back and our younger guys, I think we’ll be OK,” Hoff said.

As for the opening tilt against the Firebirds of Devils Lake, Hoff isn’t quite sure that BR will be 100 percent ready, but he welcomes the evaluation it will give them.

“I’m not sure we’re not going to be ready, because we haven’t gotten two solid weeks in, due to some mixed up things going on,” Hoff said. “But it will be all right, we have a week and half until our next game, so at least we get to see where we are at.”

The Braves’ second home game will be at 3 p.m. on Nov. 30 when they take host Dickinson in Bottineau.