KINGMAN — Every expansion team hopes to find a spark, a player who arrives with something to prove and the drive to back it up. For Augustana University’s second‑year Division I hockey program, that spark has come from a freshman forward who traveled farther than most to get here.
The path for the 5’ 9” freshman to the Augustana Vikings’ in Sioux Falls, South Dakota began in Minsk, Belarus — a world away from the rinks of the Upper Midwest. Leaving home as a teenager is no small leap, but Leo made it with purpose, landing in Aberdeen, South Dakota, to play junior hockey with the Aberdeen Wings. It was there, in one of the toughest grind‑it‑out junior leagues in the country, that he began sharpening the tools that now define his game.
This writer watched that development firsthand while serving as news bureau chief in Aberdeen and producing a feature story on him for Dakota News Now. Even then, he carried himself like a player who understood the work required to climb the ladder. Every shift mattered. Every practice was an audition. You could see the potential long before the wider hockey world caught on.
Now, as a freshman at Augustana, he is the team’s leading goal scorer — a remarkable feat for a second‑year program competing against established Division I powers. His impact isn’t an accident. It’s the product of years spent adapting, battling, and proving himself in places far from home.
Augustana’s rise has quickly become one of the best stories in college hockey. Expansion teams aren’t supposed to be this competitive this fast, but the Vikings play like a group with something to prove. And players like Leo — who never learned how to take a night off — are the reason.
If Augustana finds its way into the postseason conversation, and possibly to the Frozen Four being played in Las Vegas this year, it will be because of the same qualities that brought a teenager from Minsk to the prairies of South Dakota and to the college in Sioux Falls: resilience, hunger, and a belief that the next step is always within reach.
Allen Scott
