By: Ken Oda, minotauroshockey.com
Minot, ND – The Minot Minotauros opened the season in Brookings way back in September, and the Blizzard returned the favor coming to Minot for the Tauros home opening series in October. In a quirk of the schedule the Tauros have played 37 games since and none have been against Brookings. Now the teams will see plenty of each other with eight of the Tauros final 15 games being against the Blizzard starting this weekend with two at the Maysa Arena on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.
Griff Jeszka (12g 23a) leads the Blizzard in scoring with 35 points on the season. Blizzard second leading scorer Kane Durment (13g 19a) did the most damage through the first four meetings with a goal and five assists. The Blizzard third leading scorer Mikael Hakkarainen (9g 22a) had a pair of goals against the Tauros as did Garrett Elmore (9g 9a). In goal Josh Kuehmichel (8-9-2) took both losses the last time the Blizzard came to the Maysa, recently acquired Jacob Gwillim (6-5-5) has yet to face the Tauros.
For the Tauros Tyler Jeanson (8g 19a) had a goal and five assists against the Blizzard and Christian Mohs (13g 23a) had a goal and four assists. Chase Springman (11g 16a) had three goals against Blizzard. The Tauros have had a balanced attack of late with 16 different players registering a point over the last five games, 10 of those players have at least two points. In net Lucas Murray (13-10-1) went 1-0-1 against the Blizzard stopping 47 of 51 shots on goal. Gunner Rivers (10-8-2) has not seen the Blizzard yet since being acquired from Odessa last month.
Saturday night’s game will start at 8:05 p.m. after the Minot High Magician play in the West Region Title Game which starts at 5:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon’s game starts at 3:00 p.m. Tickets for both games are available by clicking the “Tickets” tab atop this page.