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‘Huge’ 7-5 home win for Braves over Bismarck

By Sue Sitter - | Jan 22, 2022

Sue Sitter/PCT The Bottineau-Rugby Braves celebrate a goal against the Bismarck Demons in Bottineau.

Aftter defeating the Bismarck High School Demons at the west regional hockey tournament in 2021, the Bottineau-Rugby Braves met them again Jan. 15, in Bottineau, eager to prove their regional win wasn’t a fluke.

Bottineau-Rugby won their regular season matchup 7-2. Fans from Bottineau, Rugby and other communities the Braves called home never needed convincing the Braves were a force to be reckoned with. However, the win made followers of high school hockey take notice.

“This win today is huge,” Braves Head Coach Jesse Nostdahl said after the game.

Bismarck skated onto the ice in the first period with their typical aggression. Just five seconds in, forward Hunter Acker landed a goal for the Demons. Two minutes later, Acker scored again, this time with assistance from Charlie Jerome.

The Braves went to work, boosting coverage of their D-Zone while steadily invading Demons’ territory. Just over a minute after Acker’s second goal, Braves forward Macen Heisler landed an unassisted goal. The Braves put their focus on wearing the Demons down. They succeeded, paving the way for a goal by forward Colton Getzlaff, assisted by Matt Olson and Dylan Bartsch. Next came a goal shot by Ethan Siemens, assisted by Getzlaff. The Demons tied the game 3-3 with a last-second shot by Acker, who earned an early hat trick.

The Braves played the second period with even more determination. So did the Demons, who scored the first of two goals on a shot by Remington Richardson, assisted by Reese Nagel. The Braves answered with a goal landed by Getzlaff, assisted by Siemens. The Demons pulled ahead to a 5-4 lead late in the period with a goal landed by Dawson Lentz, assisted by Gavin Rader and Owen Haas.

Nostdahl said of the game, “I was going through my mind and wondering if I should change some lines, but I didn’t have enough of a group so I just kind of wanted to watch it play out a little bit and watch the guys kind of claw their way back in. So, then I didn’t have to do that, fortunately.”

The Braves swarmed the Demons’ D-Zone in period 3. Getzlaff tied the score with a goal assisted by Siemens. Forty seconds later, Olson landed the go-ahead goal, assisted by Getzlaff and Siemens. The Demons kept the Braves’ defenders busy. Goalie Easton Freeman would log 36 saves in the game. The Braves continued to swarm Demons goalie Carter Schafer, whose save total reached 25 for the game. Just over halfway into the period, Siemens built on the Braves’ lead, assisted by Olson. The Demons would see their shot attempts go astray, if they were lucky to find an opportunity for a shot at all. The Braves celebrated their 7-5 win as the final buzzer sounded.

“I just thought the guys battled their tails off. It was a roller coaster 51 minutes out there and just balancing out that wave and riding it – it was a wild ride, but I was proud of the guys,” Nostdahl said.

“You think about changing up lines right away, but then I think that first period was so flukey, to score five seconds in, then with zero seconds on the clock, that’s unheard of. I’ve never seen that before,” Nostdahl said of Acker’s goals.

“We kind of had to say, ‘That’s an anomaly. We have to keep trudging through here and build on it,'” Nostdahl added.

Nostdahl said the Braves would play two away games in Hazen and Dickinson next.

“The points are so big this year, with lots of teams in the middle,” Nostdahl said of the Braves’ number 4 standing the west region. “But we just have to win. This win today is huge, but these two games next week, if we win those, we’re going to be in a good spot.”