The Minot Minotauros open their four-day tryout camp on Thursday, June 25, at Maysa Arena with more than 100 skaters expected to participate looking to be invited back to the team’s main camp in late August. Mike Kraft/MDN

Maysa Arena turned off its lights and put the ice resurfacers in storage a bit earlier than it’s had to for the majority of the past 15 years when it came to the Minot Minotauros.

Typically in late April and early May, the sounds of slapshots, goal horns and big hits along the boards echo from inside the 1,800-capacity Pepsi Rink. This year, however, those sounds were replaced by a haunting silence, as the Tauros missed out on the postseason for just the third time in the team’s 15-year history. Minot finished 23-31-5 overall and ended up seventh in the eight-team Central Division. The 23 wins were their fewest since the 2020-21 season.

“The division is competitive where you can’t take nights off let alone a period here or a shift here and there because that can be the difference in a hockey game and can be the difference between us piling points up or other teams piling points up and taking points away from us,” Tauros head coach and general manager Cody Campbell said.

The Tauros have turned the page and are now focused on the upcoming 2026-27 season, which kicks off with four days worth of tryouts beginning Thursday, June 25, where between 110-120 players descend on the Magic City hoping to receive an invitation to Minot’s main camp in late August. Among those who will be in attendance include returning players from last year, tendered players and the majority of their 10 total draft picks with the exception of their overseas players and those currently playing in the USHL.

Minot has holes to fill in all three areas, as the Tauros will be without defensemen Ty James, Trevor Stewart, Riley Mullen and Owen Dawson, and forward Davin Nichols, who all aged out of junior hockey. Those five skaters accounted for 96 points on 25 goals and 71 assists. Forward Dane Ramirez and defenseman Anthony Spadaro are expected to start their respective seasons in the USHL.

The Tauros will also sport a brand new goalie room this season, as their three main netminders are no longer with the team. Brian Cooke was selected in the third round of the Ontario Hockey League draft by the London Knights and Chase Anderson is playing collegiately at Williams College in Massachusetts. Devin Rustlie was traded to Kenai River midway through the season.

Twelve goaltenders will partake in tryouts this week, including Ryan Bodar, who the Tauros took in the NAHL draft with one of their two third-round picks. Bodar played 30 games last year with the St. Louis AAA Blues 18U team, recording a 1.83 goals against average and a .921 save percentage.

The Tauros selected eight players in the main draft and two others in the Futures Draft. Players selected in the Futures Draft are allowed to play a maximum of 10 games this season and the team holds their rights until Nov. 15, 2027. Their first selection in the Futures Draft was one that Tauros fans will recognize in Dylan Knox, who is the younger brother of former team captain Weston Knox. Weston Knox played three years at Andover High School in Minnesota before spending the next two years with the Tauros. With Minot, he appeared in 99 games, registering 46 points as a defenseman and captaining the team in 2023-24. He now plays for the University of Wisconsin and tallied an assist in the national championship game against Denver.

Dylan Knox put up a goal and nine assists in his first year at Andover High School as a defenseman. Dylan Knox won’t be at the tryout camp, as he will be participating in USA Hockey’s national camp this week.

“Dylan, offensively, is a really elite skater and has a chance to be a very, very high end player,” Campbell said. “And then the connection with his family. Weston Knox was a captain here. We know the type of kid we’re going to be getting in Dylan. We’re super excited to have another Knox in the pipeline for our organization. He’s one of those defenseman that don’t come around that often that are both really good defensively and have the major offensive upside as well.”

Minot selected fellow defenseman Charles Kleinman of Gaithersburg, Md, with its second selection of the Futures Draft. He recorded 14 assists in 70 games with South Kent School’s 15U AAA team.

“Charlie is 16 years old and is 6-foot-4 and has a huge frame,” Campbell said. “He plays really long and takes up a lot of space and is just another one of those guys who don’t grow on trees. If he continues to mature at the rate we believe he’s going to, he’s going to turn into a really solid defender for us down the road. Guys with size like that just aren’t everywhere out there, plus Charlie is a really good skater at his size.”

Kleinman will be in attendance this week.

In the main draft, the Tauros selected four forwards, three defensemen and one goaltender. They picked up three players currently in the USHL in Brady Zugec (first round), Thomas Spencer (fourth round) and Joseph Mense (eighth round), as well as Alex Brello (ninth round) from the NA3HL. The Tauros’ other three picks are international players. Thomas Lahtinen (third round) is from Vantta, Finland. Nurislam Ziyash (sixth round) calls Kazakhstan home and Artyom Zhukov (seventh round) is from Zhlobin, Belarus.

“We had needs at all positions,” Campbell said. “We wanted to make sure our eight main players that we drafted we had already had locked up prior to the draft, but we wanted to make sure nothing squirrely happened and somebody else took a flier on one of those kids and changed our depth chart, but we feel good about the draft. We had a good plan of where we wanted to slot guys, where we thought we could take a risk and we were able to stick to that plan and feel good about this year’s draft class and hopefully it supplements what is already a good returning core of what we’re going to have moving forward into the start of the year.”

Players will begin checking into camp around 2 p.m. on Thursday. There are no practices during the tryout camp. Instead, players are split into six teams and will all play four games. The games begin at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, with each team playing one contest. They all return to the ice on Friday for two games each before concluding with one more on Saturday morning. After Saturday’s morning matchups, the camp number is reduced to about 80 players, with 40 skaters taking part in a prospect’s game Saturday night. Campbell said these players will be ones that they will continue to look at in the future, but won’t be on the roster to start the season. The other 40 players will be in the competition for a roster spot and take part in an all-star game on Sunday, June 28, at roughly 10 a.m. From there, the coaching staff will make their determination as to who they are going to invite back to training camp.

While skill set is important, that is not the only thing Campbell and his staff look for when determining who earns a roster spot and who doesn’t.

“It’s easy to pick out the guy that has two goals during a game, but we want to also be looking for the guys that are going to be good penalty killers for us, guys that are going to be really reliable when we’re up a goal and can shut it down defensively,” Campbell said. “It’s easy to be able to pick out the skill, but we want to put a team together. No team that’s ever had a whole lot of success has four first lines and eight top pair defensemen. You have to balance that out with guys fitting into different roles and this weekend is really the first step in that process in figuring out where each of these guys are going to fit in our lineup moving forward and ultimately who’s going to fit into it and who’s not.”

The entire four days of camp is open to the public.