FAIRMONT — After graduating goaltender Colby Kuhl, the Fairmont Area Cardinals boys hockey team need someone to fill his skates.

Head coach Kris Olson said a competition will decide who will spend the season in net for the Cardinals, but Tyson Geerdes is starting the year with an advantage.

“The big name that graduated is Colby Kuhl,” Kris Olson said. “The loss of your go-to starting goaltender leaves some big shoes to fill. I think we’ll have that in Tyson Geerdes and Dakotah Hoefker. This is a big hole to fill, Colby was the starter for three years from the time he came in to the time he left and he set records.

“It’s gonna be competitive, but with Tyson having two years under his belt at the varsity level, it’s gonna be more up to him as far as what happens out there.”

Kuhl was a co-captain on last year’s Fairmont Area team. This season, junior defender Carter Olson will take over as the head captain, with seniors Riley Chaffee and Karson Legred, and junior Carson Kuhl as the assistant captains.

Kris Olson said he picked Carter Olson because he is a leader.

“He was an assistant captain last year and he’s just got it,” Kris Olson said. “He’s a good team captain in every sense of the term.”

This year, the Cardinals have 23 players on roster including six seniors, eight juniors, seven sophomores and two freshmen. Kris Olson said having 23 players is both good and bad for his team.

“It’s a good bad number,” Kris Olson said. “The plus would be, having 23 creates competition at different levels, the downside is I can only roster 20 guys each game. Three are gonna have to sit out every game and you need about 26 to have a junior varsity team.”

Tony Nuss, Tanner DeWar, Max Seifried, Legred, Chaffee and Logan Zimprich are the seniors for the Cardinals this season, while Hudson Artz and Eli Anderson are the youngest team members.

Kris Olson said while Artz and Anderson are young, he expects they will contribute.

“Hudson being a returner from last year, he did great as an eighth-grader,” Kris Olson said. “A few games in, he was a contributing factor on the team. We’re expecting good things out of him again this year.

“With the addition of Eli, I’m excited to watch him play, to watch him mature and develop in the program. He’s a heck of a hockey player.”

The Cardinals were originally scheduled to begin their season tonight with an away game in Luverne, but because of the success of the Fairmont football team, had to postpone that game as well as Thursday night’s scheduled home opener. Now the team will start the season next Tuesday against the Minnesota River Bulldogs at Martin County Arena in Fairmont.

“We’ve had a little different start to the year schedulewise with the football team doing as well as they did, and congrats to them,” Kris Olson said. “I have five football players, so we rescheduled our two games this week to get those guys some more time on the ice. Needing to reschedule the games this week was a little detrimental, but we need to move forward as a team and we can’t do that without our whole team.”

Kris Olson said he and the team are excited to begin the season and ready to improve on last season’s 4-22 record. In the 2017-18 season, the Cardinals swept the three-game season series against Worthington, 5-3, 4-3, 4-2 and beat Redwood Valley 4-2.

The team ended its regular season winning two of its final three games.

Kris Olson said the start of every new season is exciting because it always brings something with it.

“With every new season comes that four-letter word — hope,” Kris Olson said.