The Austin Bruins are headed down the stretch of the regular season and their third straight NAHL Central Division title is in sight — but it isn’t clinched yet.

The Bruins, who lead second place Minot by five points in the Central with six games left on Austin’s schedule, will take on the Minnesota Wilderness in a big pair of games at 7:05 p.m. in Riverside Arena Friday and Saturday. The Wilderness are tied for first place in the Midwest Division and whoever has the better weekend in Riverside may end up having home ice if the Wilderness and Bruins end up meeting in the Robertson Cup Finals down the road.

“It’s real big. We’re fighting for a division title,” Austin head coach Chris Tok said. “It’s a big weekend and you’ve got to play the game the right way.”

The Bruins (32-11-11 overall) have gone 10-2 in their last 10 games and two of those wins were in overtime, which is a big plus for a team that has lost 11 contests in OT this year.

Tok knew going into this season that he’d have to be patient with his young, but talented squad but things weren’t off to the best start when the Bruins sat in second place in the Central for the majority of the first half of the season. After Tok wasn’t sure where his team was, he had them come in for a 6 a.m. skating session on a Sunday morning, which happened to be held near the trade deadline.

“We wanted to know who was going to quit now, not on March 31 and in the playoffs,” Tok said of the early morning skate session, which took place about nine hours after the Bruins had played in a game. “It kind of sunk into them at that point that we weren’t just doing it because they played poorly that weekend. We were trying to find out who will pay the price to win a Robertson Cup. When they found out our motive, they were like ‘let’s go.'”

That morning session has pushed the Bruins to new heights and now the team is hoping to close out the season strong and make another run at the Robertson Cup in the playoffs. After this weekend’s series, the Bruins will have four games against Brookings, which has beat Austin twice in the last 12 games, and is fighting for the final playoff spot in the NAHL Central.

“They’ve got to win some games to get into the playoffs and we want to win some games to win the [division] title and move into the right direction,” Tok said. “Brookings is a hard team to play against because they don’t leave you a lot of room to operate.”

The Bruins don’t have a wealth of Division I commits on their team just yet, but some of its players may very well land on college rosters eventually. Midseason pick-up Alex Jasiek has committed to Dartmouth and no other players have received offers at this time. But Tok said the squad has received plenty of interest from college scouts.

Austin goalies Jake Kielly and Evan Smith, Trevor Boyd, Ian Scheid and Nico Strum have all been getting contact from coaches.

“The phone’s been ringing and there’s guys asking about them which is always a good thing,” Tok said.