Sports

Braves earn first win as they top Dickinson

By Tyler Ohmann

12/03/2013

A five-goal second period and two players with hat tricks helped the Bottineau-Rugby (BR) Braves earn their first win with a 9-4 victory over Dickinson last Saturday afternoon.

The game, which was in Bottineau, was tied 1-1 after junior Luke Amsbaugh scored the first leg of his hat trick late in the first period.
Amsbaugh went back to work again to kick off the second period as he scored a pair of goals in the first five minutes to earn his hat trick and put the Braves up 3-1 on the Midgets.

Dickinson brought the game back to a goal lead with 8:25 left in the second period when Michael McChesney scored an even strength marker.

That would be as close as the Midgets would get, however, as BR would score twice in quick succession following the McChesney goal.

The first came from senior Cody Bedlion, his second goal of the season, to extend the lead back to two goals.

Fellow senior Harrison Aide then scored the first of his hat trick with 4:20 left in the period.

Dickinson would get a third goal later in the second, but with 9.8 seconds left Aide struck for the second time to put the Braves up 6-3.

Within the first half of the final frame BR would tack on three more. Aide secured his hat trick with an unassisted marker at 12:23. The Braves’ ninth goal came a little less than two minutes later as junior Noah Grant found the back of the net off the helper from Aide.

“I thought our depth guys played a little bit better,” said Braves head coach David Hoff. “We got pucks to the net, and what we worked on the last 10 days was not just getting pucks on the edges, but getting down in the crease.”

“If Luke (Amsbaugh) and Harrison (Aide) do that, we’re going to get chances,” Hoff added.

That was evident just a short time later.

Not 16 seconds later the BR third line struck as sophomore David Arstein scored his first career goal. Senior Nick Schaan earned his first assist of the season on the play.

“That’s something important early, because kids start to feel better and we can build on it,” Hoff said of the goal.

The Braves were strong on the power play as they scored twice with the man advantage.

“We can make people pay with our power play, and I thought we did a good job there,” Hoff said.

The one thing that Hoff said needs the most improving is the Braves’ defense, which has a lot of youth involved.

“I know we were a little sloppy on defense, even when we were up 9-3, and we have got to grow up a little bit down there,” Hoff said. “We’ve got a lot of young kids and it takes time.”

They did improve a little bit though, and that is testament to tough practice.

“We worked hard on defensive drills and trying to keep your butt in the right spot,” Hoff said. “The only thing I didn’t like tonight was that we defended so many times with only one defenseman.”

One thing that BR will have to stress according to Hoff is playing together with defensive partners.

“We want our defensemen to jump in, but you don’t want to jump in when it’s going the other direction, and we have to get better at defending in pairs,” Hoff said. “You’re defensive partners for a reason.”

The 1-1 Braves will travel to Boissevain next Monday night and their next West Region game will be in Rugby on Dec. 13.

BR also played Deloraine at home last night, but scores and stats were unavailable by press time.