The Legacy Sabers are on fire, built on a foundation of young scorers and tough practices.

Legacy enters Thursday riding high on a seven-game win streak and has emerged as the top team in the west standings. The competitive nature of practices has fueled the winning ways, understanding that their best is needed in every minute of every game.

“You know, it’s tiring but in a third period of a game, overtime of a game, we haven’t had our luck in overtime,” says junior forward Marcus Butts. “We just beat Mandan in overtime, but we’ve been to five overtimes. You just got to push yourself in practice, you got to push yourself at the end of the game, whether it’s a tight game or a loose game whatever it is.

“Last year, kind of coming in as a new team, we kind of thought we had something to prove last year,” says Butts. “And this year, we had a lot of returning players and it might come easy for us, but we learned the hard way at the beginning of the year that that is not how it’s going to be.”

Players point out the loss to Bottineau-Rugby as a jumping-off point right before the new year, and head coach Mario Lamoureux says he’s seen a step up in play, especially from his depth lines.

“I think those guys bought into how we want to play,” says head coach Mario Lamoureux. “Every coach is going to have certain things they want to do and those guys are playing on the same page. They’re doing the things as a group that we’re asking for, and when you have a five-man unit on the ice working in the same direction, hopefully, things will fall into place and those guys have done that.”

“If a team is playing good, you got to play your best game if you want to beat them,” says junior defenseman Jameson Johnson. “It’s not going to be a cake walk and we know that now, so we’re just piling on the wins. It’s helping a lot. Hopefully, we can keep it going, going into WDA and state.”

Legacy will have a tough test in their next game, facing Century on Tuesday, both teams have the longest win streaks in the WDA.