Courtesy RapidCityRush.com

Take a look up and down any ECHL team’s roster. You’re guaranteed to find hockey players from at least two countries, several states and provinces, and myriad backgrounds, all coming together to compete in a city they may never otherwise visit.

About nine hours and a border crossing away from Rapid City lies little Rivers, Manitoba. With just 971 people, it’s the smallest hometown of anyone on this year’s team. For one of the Rush’s hardest working players and smoothest skaters, Briley Wood, it is the perfect place to call home.

“Rivers is a one-of-a-kind, beautiful place,” Wood said. “Lots of hardworking people. Very, very kind and generous people that come together as a community. You can look out over the land and see all the farm crops. It is beautiful.”

Wood grew up on the family farm, some 15 minutes outside Rivers, in the heart of the Canadian Prairies. They tend to about 5,000 acres, or about 15% the size of Rapid City. In the 500 acres designated for cattle pasture and a feedlot, they can fit up to a couple thousand livestock. The rest is for grain farming—corn, wheat, canola, and soybeans.

He lives a simple life, having been born into two things which have remained constant: farming and hockey. He started both at a young age.

“Ever since I was tall enough to look over the dashboard in the tractor, I have been driving,” Wood recalled. “I’d say eight or nine years old, somewhere around there. It’s my whole life.”

It wasn’t just the grain going into the ground. Briley’s father, Ted, planted the seeds of hockey as soon as he could. Ted’s career took him as far as the Western Hockey League, along with some junior A hockey in Manitoba. He stopped at the age of 20 to pursue the farm, but the love of the game never left. Ted would find time every winter to build a rink right on the land for him and Briley to skate on, a timeless Canadian tradition in the great, vast, frozen outdoors.

Farm boys have become household names in the National Hockey League, more so than maybe any other sport on the continent. Take hockey’s most famous family, the Sutters, and their farm near Viking, Alberta. Six of the seven brothers reached the NHL. Legendary Toronto Maple Leaf Wendel Clark was raised on a farm in Saskatchewan. It isn’t just a relic of generations past, either: take 2025 fifth-overall draft choice Brady Martin, who skipped the draft ceremony to stay home and put in a day’s work.

The common theme everyone raves about with hockey players from that lifestyle? Work ethic. A consistent, mild-mannered winger, Wood has undoubtedly established himself as a tireless worker with a strong net-front presence, quick feet, and a hard shot. He moves and competes well for his size, at 6-foot-3 and 187 pounds, all intangibles that make him a valuable piece of a roster with serious playoff aspirations.

“Work ethic is a big skill that can translate (from the farm to hockey),” Wood said. “It is a lot of manual labor, too, like shoveling grain or clearing out stalls, putting big railway ties in the ground to fence off pens for cattle, hammering nails, so that’s forearm strength.”

“It is a lot of hard work, and it is tough on your body and your mind,” Wood continued. “You have to be mentally and physically tough in hockey and in farming, and I think that translates over.”

Those intangibles come from the long hours worked for years on end, making getting up for practice a breeze. During seeding time, around the start of the offseason, Wood gets up with the sunrise and often works as late as midnight. As things taper off later in the summer, he finds time to sneak away in the mornings to skate and work out.

“It is hard to put into words how much I like it,” Wood said. “I just really enjoy it. I love it. I think it is the best lifestyle there is. You just feel good about yourself when you put all the work in and you hope to get the results, the same as in hockey.”

While Wood has had some experience riding horses—his mom looks after a couple adult horses on the farm—he prefers riding his quad around these days.

“I did ride a bit when I was younger,” Wood acknowledged. “I’m not very good. I fell off too many times, but I enjoyed it. It is not easy, but it is fun. I tip my hat to the folks who do rodeo. We have a lot of rodeos around, and in the summertime, I usually try to go to a couple close to home. It is always fun to go there and see all the amazing things they do.”

Rapid City is the smallest market in the league, something that endears itself to Rush players year after year. It is not for everyone, but Dave Smith has used it to build a roster of players who want to come to Rapid City. The Black Hills are for the cold-weather, outdoorsy, small-town type of guy.

That description fits Wood perfectly. Agriculture is as big a deal in South Dakota as it is in Manitoba, and from the first time he came here as a visitor with the Utah Grizzlies, he felt it.

“I just loved the city when we came in,” Wood said. “Loved the rink, and I was just always excited to play here.”

“You can tell the people here are hardworking. They care a lot and they have a passion for what they do. It is the same feeling I get back home, for sure. It feels like we have the whole community behind us playing hockey. You always know they have your back, and it is cool to see.”

The only player in the ECHL from Rivers, Wood has been away from the farm during hockey season since he was 16, a reality that nearly everyone good enough to play at a high level faces. He has stayed out west for his entire career, from Winnipeg to Lethbridge, Alberta to Wenatchee, Washington to West Valley City, Utah. The opportunity to suit up for the Rapid City Rush is as close to home as Briley’s been in a few years.

One thing is for certain: Wood has his career all figured out at just 23 years old. Play professional hockey for as long as possible, then head back to the farm life he has cherished so much.

“It is all I want to do, to be honest. I just love doing it.”