Unfamiliar standings in the new split-division CIHL The Williams Lake Stampeders find themselves in welcome, but unfamiliar territory, alone on top of the Central Interior Hockey League, including the new east division, with eight points from four straight wins in their opening part of the schedule. The Stamps consolidated their first-place position with a convincing 9-3 win over rivals the 100 Mile House Bears, at 100 Mile, Saturday night. The Bears would open the scoring as Neil Christopher found the twine behind Stamps starting goaltender, Willie Sellars at the 17:39 mark of the first period. That lead would last for half a period before the visiting Stampeders tied the game on a Wilfred Robbins shot with less than 8 minutes left in the first period. The goal opened the flood gates as Williams Lake added 4 more markers in just over 2 ½ minutes of play to leave the first period up by a score of 5-1. Wilfred Robbins notched his second of the evening with Grant Johnson, Stuart Sasges and Brook Paquette adding singles. 100 Mile House sniper, Brad Stark would close the gap to 5-2 at the 11:36 mark of the second period. However that would be as close as the Bears would come as Williams Lake again took over in the final minutes of the second period with Sasges adding his second goal on the night and Kyle Elkins closing out the second period scoring. The Stampeders leading scorer on the season, Francis Johnson added to his personal totals with two third period markers, to close out the Williams Lake scoring. 100 Mile House’s Roy Nichol would add to his teams total goals on the night as he found the net behind Stamps goalie, Willie Sellars, to make the final score 9-3 Williams Lake. Up next for the now 4-0 Stampeders are a pair of road games this coming weekend, in Mackenzie against the Moose. The next home games will be November 4 & 5 when the expansion Hazelton Wolverines with a 1-2 record make their first ever visit to Williams Lake. In Smithers, the west-division leading Smithers Steelheads hosted the Houston Luckies and found the Luckies in a belligerent mood after they lost 12-2 at home against the Ice Demons a week ago. Luckies still found plenty of time to be in the penalty box, but had enough defensive and offensive power to finish off the Steelies 6-3. The two teams, being close, are only playing Saturday night matches this year, so there was no Sunday game. In Hazelton, however, the Wolverines’ fans were jam-packed into the smallest arena in the league to see the home opener against the Terrace River Kings. The fans were a little disappointed in the third period, after the teams were tied 5-5, after two, the Wolverines took some extra penalties and the Kings capitalized to win 8-6. The game was pretty much the Ivan Lashenko show as the Kings right winger scored four times in a row for Terrace, including an unassisted goal for his fourth of the night. Laschenko also assisted on a Steve Cullis goal that turned out to be the winner. Other scorers for Terrace were Derek Jurista, Dave Jones and former Ice Demon, Trevor Johnson, in his first season with the Kings. However, Wolverines fans put the disappointment of the opening game behind them on Sunday as their team came out and played a powerful game to edge the River Kings 5-4 for their first win of the season. Scorers for Hazelton were Am Marshall (Lou Parent Jr.), former King Phil Morrison ((unassisted), Mitch Morrison (Kirby Muldoe) Mitch Morrison (unassisted) and Stu Barnes (unassisted) had the winner. Terrace answered with goals by Ivan Laschenko (Davy Jones), Mike Dibbly (Derek Jurista, Dustin Quezada), Troy Farkvam (Josh Richdale) and Davy Jones (Mike Dibbly). There was great celebration in Hazelton and the fans will be looking for the Wolverines to go on a run when they get to see some more exciting CIHL hockey on home ice next week as the visitors are the Smithers Steelheads, who lead the western division with seven points from their six games played. Wolverines have four games in hand on Smithers, and three games on hand on Terrace, just three points ahead in the league, tied with the Kitimat Ice Demons, who have played four games, winning two, tying and losing once. Also upcoming this Saturday the Terrace River Kings go into the unfriendly confines of the Tamitik Arena in Kitimat, where they have never won. They’ll have to stand on the line while Kitimat raises their CIHL championship and Coy Cup provincial championship banners before the game. The Kitimat fans will also see the Ice Demons new away jerseys, as Terrace has agreed to wear their home whites so the fans can get a look at the new Demons’ outfits. The fairly untested Omenica Ice, which has two straight wins from its only two games this season, will face their toughest test to date in Houston against the Luckies, coming off their win against the Steelheads. The Ice won’t play a home game until they face the Kitimat Ice Demons at Vanderhoof on the November 4-5 weekend. Also on Saturday and Sunday, undefeated Williams Lake will be tested also in Mackenzie where a pretty desperate Moose team will have all of its best players on hand in an attempt to get back into league east division contention. This will show what the new Stamps are made of. By that time we’ll have a chance to see if or how the league standings have changed.