Brainerd Boys Hockey Looks To Reload In 2019

After falling one goal short of section championship last year, the Brainerd Warriors boys hockey team is reloading for the 2019 season.

“This group of kids is really a pretty tight group and we knew that after last year that this was a tight group of guys,” said Brainerd Boys Hockey Head Coach Dave Aus.

The Warriors have a lot of new faces with several seniors from last year’s team graduating. They also will have some new wrinkles thrown in offensively.

“We’ve been doing this new thing called chip and rip, the boys love that, basically we get in the zone, we either just bring it as hard as we can or we chip it, that’s the only two options,” said Brainerd Boys Hockey Senior Left-Wing Mike Liber.

The point of the chip and rip is make the game less complex.

We’ve tried to simplify things, we’re pretty certain that we’re not quite as explosive as we’ve been in the last couple of years,” said Aus.

“The person with the puck either chips it softly so it doesn’t get to the goalie and then you have your centerman that’s driving and he goes and gets the puck, or a rip is where you ring it all the way around to the far side guy,” said Brainerd Boys Hockey Right-Wing Kaleb Sundquist.

Even with some changes on offense, if the warriors want to succeed this year it’ll be by winning low-scoring, grind-it-out games.

“if we’re going to win, it’s going to be 2-1, 3-2 kind of game, we feel quite honestly pretty good about our goaltenders and we feel really good about our defensive core too,” said Aus.

One constant with every Warrior team is the boys rallying together to become one unit.

“Basically it’s been the same 12 guys playing on the same team for the last seven to eight years,” said Liber.

“Same thing, you know, just sell put for he boys, do everything you can,” said Brainerd Boys Hockey Left-Wing Josh McLain.