By Jeremy Pike, minotauroshockey.com Austin, MN – Two very different games yet the same results in the standings: The Minot Minotauros swept the weekend’s slate of games over the Austin Bruins. Friday night was a tightly-contested affair with the Tauros holding on for a 2-1 win. Saturday night, the Tauros scored a touchdown and kicked the extra point while pitching a shutout for a 7-0 win. Just one goal short of matching the Tauros’ eight-game win streak.
It took a while in the first period, but Colby Bear got the Tauros on the board after 14 minutes of play. Ian Spencer got the puck and carried it through center ice on the left wall. He slid a pass into the middle of the ice to send Colby Bear in on a breakaway, and Bear beat Bruins goalie Vilgot Holm glove-side. It was Bear’s 10th goal of the season. Spencer added his 11th assist and Rylan Jockims picked up his 21st assist.
If you took your eyes off the action for too long, you might have missed the Tauros’ second goal. Colby Woogk kept the puck in at the blue line and carried it up the left wall. As he skated into the corner, he slid the puck out into the slot for John Emmons who snapped it home. It was Emmons’ ninth goal of the season. Woogk continued to build on his record-setting season with his 20th assist while Spencer picked up his 12th assist and second of the night.
It took a little longer than the second goal, but the Tauros did make it 3-0 only 2:16 after their first goal of the game. The Tauros harried the Bruins through the neutral zone and back into their defensive zone. When the Bruins attempted to clear the puck up the wall, it hit a linesman and caromed toward the middle of the ice. Jockims pounced on the loose puck and skated up the ice and wide to the left of the net. He spotted Jack O’Hanisain crashing the back post and fed him perfectly to tap in his 26th goal of the season. It was Jockims’ second assist of the night and 22nd of the season.
The teams went into the intermission with the Tauros leading 3-0 and 11-9 in shots.
While the scoring would wait in the second, it did not take long before the Bruins and Tauros came together destructively. Chad Muller made a big hit near the wall in the neutral zone, and the Bruins did not take kindly to that. Nathan Williams, the Bruins’ lone goalscorer on the weekend, immediately went looking for a fight and dropped the gloves to which Will Dawson obliged.
After the dust settled, Williams was hit with a two-minute instigator penalty, a five-minute fighting major, and a game misconduct for fighting which saw his night end much earlier than expected. Dawson got hit with a two-minute and a 10-minute penalty.
There would be more penalties but in the midst of that, Adam Mahler would make it 4-0. With 12:39 gone in the second, the puck came up the right wall and Mahler pinched down. Before a defender could close out, he threw the puck on net as if looking for a Tauro to latch on to it. Instead, it somehow caught Holm by surprise and the puck found the back of the net for Mahler’s sixth goal of the season.
The Tauros made it 5-0 with just over a minute to play in the period on an abbreviated power play. Woogk put the puck on net and the rebound caromed out into the slot. Joel Lehtinen dove for the puck and he shoveled the puck off Holm and into the net as he fell to the ice. That was Lehtinen’s 15th goal of the season. Woogk picked up his 21st assist and O’Hanisain added his 29th helper of the season. The period would end with the score 5-0 and the Tauros outshooting the Bruins 13-10 in the second and 24-19 overall. Coincidentally, the difference in shots was the same as the score.
The Bruins came out in the third firing. They registered 10 shots in the period before the Tauros even got one shot recorded as on net. The first Tauros shot came at the tail end of a power play, right around the eight-minute mark of the period.
Despite the flurry of offense by the Bruins, they still could not get a puck past Swedin. He finished the night having saved all 34 shots he faced.
The common theme on the night was that the Tauros took time before scoring. They also had a little help with Kaden Muir wiping out a Bruins power play thanks to a hit to the face of Colby Woogk. Muir got saddled with a five-minute major for a hit to the head and a game misconduct, the second Bruins player to have his night end early.
While the teams skated four a-side, the Tauros offense went to work. Will Dawson carried the puck deep below the goal line. He spotted Weston Knox crashing down from the point and flipped the puck into the slot. Knox one-timed his shot just inside the far post right past Holm’s glove. It was Knox’s fourth goal of the season. Dawson registered his 18th assist of the season, and Cayden Casey added his 21st assist.
Then when the Tauros went a man up, Casey kicked the proverbial extra point to make it 7-0 with 2:10 remaining. Mahler drove deep and took the puck behind the Bruins’ net before carrying it back out on the other side. Casey crashed the far post and Mahler hit him so Casey could tap in his 10th goal of the season. It was Mahler’s 14th assist of the season and Dawson added his 19th helper.
The Tauros ground out a tough 2-1 win on Friday night. It was a relatively quiet first period as neither team was able to solve the starting goaltenders. The Tauros outshot the Bruins 12-7 in the period despite wiping out a power play with a penalty of their own.
The second period was an incredibly atypical one for the Tauros. The Bruins outshot the Tauros by an incredible 11-2 margin, and the Bruins deservedly took the lead 6:42 into the period. Nathan Williams threw a shot towards the net but it took a redirection and trickled by Brady James. This happened after the Tauros earned a penalty but wiped it out with a slash at the 6:35 mark.
While things looked bleak through the first half of the period, the Tauros got an opening as Reilley Kotai got whistled for tripping at the 10:29 mark. It took Colby Woogk only 33 seconds of power play time to knot the game up at one.
The Tauros got an odd-man rush but were unable to put a shot on goal. The puck ended up back at the point on Woogk’s stick. Rather than wind up and fire on net, he skated toward the faceoff dot to the right of the Bruins’ net before dragging the puck past a Bruins player and into the slot. From there, Woogk made no mistake and fired it home for his 16th goal of the season.
The period would end with the score tied at 1, but there were more fireworks on the ice. At the 13:55 mark into the period, the play was whistled dead for a handpass. However, a hit after the whistle led to four players getting hit with 10-minute misconducts: Alex Laurenza and WIll Diamond of the Bruins and John Emmons and Ian Spencer of the Tauros.
That tie lasted less than four minutes into the third. After a period of sustained pressure, Nick Sewecke pounced on a loose puck just outside the crease and poked it home at the 3:48 mark to make it 2-1.
Then with just under seven minutes left in the game, it all went crazy. Will Diamond got called for goalkeeper interference, but Brady James got tossed from the game as he wound up and punched Diamond straight in the head. That brought Lukas Swedin in on an extended penalty kill. Then Adam Mahler got called for a holding penalty 21 seconds later to make it 5-on-3 in the Bruins’ advantage.
Yet Swedin and the penalty killers stood tall and kept the Bruins at bay, and the Tauros held on to win 2-1.
Next up the Tauros return to the Pepsi Rink at Maysa Arena for Fan Appreciation Weekend next Friday and Saturday. There will be beer specials all weekend long, free DASH raffles during both games, and an ice cream giveaway from Pride Dairy to the first 240 fans on Saturday night. Tickets for both games as well as the regular season final against Bismarck on April 13th, and Games 1 and 2 of the Robertson Cup Playoffs are available through the “Tickets” tab atop this page or by visiting tickets.minotauroshockey.com.