Mike Kraft/MDN Artem Prima leads the Minot Mintauros in scoring with 26 points on eight goals and 18 assists in 28 games played this season. Prima is one of three Minot skaters to play in all 28 games.

The NAHL regular season has just about hit its halfpoint as the calendar gets ready to flip over to 2026 and the playoffs are still another four months into the distance, but for the Minot Mintauros, the push to the postseason has already begun.

With one remaining game on the schedule in 2025 – a rivalry tilt in Bismarck with the defending champion Bobcats on New Year’s Eve – the Tauros are 11-14-3 with 25 points on the season, putting them in sixth place in the highly-competitive Central Division. Minot currently sits one point behind the Watertown Shamrocks and North Iowa Bulls for the fourth and final playoff spot out of the division.

The Tauros have qualified for the postseason in all but two years in franchise history – their inaugural season in 2011-12 and most recently in 2021-22. To ensure the Tauros don’t miss the postseason for a third time, head coach Cody Campbell said the key will be consistency throughout the second half of the year.

“For us, our mentality is that our playoff push has started,” Campbell said. “Right now, we’re not in a bad spot. We just need to take care of our business. In terms of what we need to fine tune, we just need to fine tune the consistency of our effort because there hasn’t been a game this year where I felt that we deserved to win and we didn’t win, so that tells you that we have the talent, we’re capable. It’s just about putting in the effort that’s required to win hockey games at this level every night.”

Like most teams in the NAHL, the Tauros have had to navigate through an ever-changing roster, injuries and losing key players to Tier I junior hockey leagues in the midst of the season. Minot has had just three players dress for all 28 games: Artem Prima, Ty James and Michael Solominsky. Fourteen players have skated in at least 20 games this season. In total, the Tauros have used a combination of 32 forwards and defensemen so far this year.

Prima leads the team in scoring with 26 points on eight goals and 18 assists. He has recorded eight multiple-point games this season. James is the veteran of the group, being the only skater in his third season with the team. The defenseman has factored into the scoring game as of late and is currently second on the team in scoring with 19 points on five goals and 14 assists. James has nine points since Nov. 22 and has recorded a point in each of his last three games.

“Ty James as a third-year veteran has been fantastic on the backend for us. He had a slower start, but has really started to play at a high level and started to be a guy that everybody else can look at each and every day to see what they are supposed to be doing and how they are supposed to be working.”

Lucca Ori (4 goals, 13 assists) and Solominsky (7 goals, 10 assists) are third on the team in scoring. Philip Wiklund has added seven goals and Dane Ramirez is tied with Prima for the team lead in goals with eight. Twenty-two skaters have registered at least one goal for Minot this season.

The scoring balance up and down the lineup helps fill the void left by a season-ending knee injury Mario Fate suffered on Nov. 8 against St. Cloud. Fate was in his 17th game and had accumulated 14 points on four goals and 10 assists before seeing his season end. The Tauros also lost Brady Zugec after 17 games, but not due to injury but rather as the result of being called up to the Fargo Force of the USHL. Zugec has two assists in 10 games with the Force.

Minot’s offense averages 3 goals per game. Its largest scoring output in a game was seven, a feat it achieved twice. The Tauros closed out the NAHL Showcase with a 7-3 victory over Anchorage and hit seven goals again in a 7-3 win against Aberdeen on Oct. 24. The Tauros have been shutout just twice this season.

The defense has been a bit more of a roller coaster. The Tauros allow 3.68 goals per game and went through a five-game stretch at the end of November that saw them yield 36 total games, including nine in their only meeting with the Bobcats. The five-game losing streak immediately followed a four-game winning streak – their longest of the season.

“Defense is just effort and work and it’s not just the goalies, it’s not just the defensemen, it’s all six guys that are on the ice at a given time,” Campbell said. “We went through a pretty horrible stretch when it came to that by everyone involved and came out the other side. Against St. Cloud on a weekend, we gave up one goal. Over the course of the last four games, I’ve been really happy with our 5-on-5 defense, pretty happy with our penalty kill. We just have to limit the number of times our kill as to go out there because it’s a taxing job and if you give a team enough opportunities with a man up, they’re normally going to find a way to squeak one by one way or another.”

Minot’s penalty killing unit has been busy this season, as the team has accumulated 519 penalty minutes total, averaging 18.5 per game. Their penalty kill ranks near the bottom of the NAHL at 73.04 percent, putting them 32nd among the 34 teams.

If the last six games are any indication, the Tauros have turned it around defensively in December. Since allowing 36 goals in five games, the Tauros have only surrendered 15 goals, including a shutout.

Devin Rustlie and Brian Cooke have split goaltending duties for the Tauros. Rustlie just recently returned to the team after two weeks in the USHL with Cedar Rapids. Rustlie is 4-5-2 with a 4.09 goals against average and .881 save percentage with one shutout. Cooke is 6-4-1 with a 3.26 goals against average and a .905 save percentage with one shutout. Cooke will begin the post-holiday break with USHL’s Omaha Lancers for a week while one of their goaltenders competes in the World Junior Championships.

The Central Division has proven to be as challenging as it has in years prior. The Tauros have a losing record against five of the seven opponents including a 0-3-1 mark against Austin. Minot is 1-1 against Minnesota and has had the most success against St. Cloud, winning all six meetings thus far.

The Bruins currently sit atop the standings with 41 points, followed closely behind by Bismarck with 39. Aberdeen is third with 35 points and Watertown and North Iowa are tied for fourth with 26 points, with Watertown currently holding the tiebreaker with more overall wins. Minot is a point ahead of St. Cloud and eight points clear of Minnesota.

“This division is so well-coached, they are such good organizations that anybody can beat anybody on a given night,” Campbell said. “You’ve seen that throughout the course of the season. It’s such a tight division, it’s well-recruited, it’s well-coached, organizations all operate at a high level. There’s no just show-up-and-win games for anybody. Development wise, that makes it so much better for our players because they can’t take a night off because if they do it’s going to be pretty evident.”

The Tauros have 31 games remaining in their push for the postseason, 16 of which will be in the friendly confines of Maysa Arena. They are currently 5-6-1 at home. The second half of the schedule features a six-game homestand from Feb. 20 through March 7 against Watertown, North Iowa and Minnesota. They have four home matchups remaining against Bismarck. The other 15 games will take place on the road, where they are 5-6-2 thus far. A pivotal six-game road trip looms from Jan. 30 through Feb. 14, going up against Watertown, Aberdeen and Minnesota.

For the Tauros, making or missing the postseason will come down to consistency, as they know they have the talent required to win.

“We have some talented players who are still learning what’s required to win at this level,” Campbell said. “There’s been stretches where we’ve done that pretty consistently and we’ve gotten the outcomes that we’ve wanted and then there’s been times we haven’t done those things consistently and we’ve got some negative outcomes. It’s been a learning experience for everybody and ultimately we’re not in a bad spot going into the second half with a team that’s only going to improve and learn how to win and close out hockey games and win in different situations.”