More surprises in week two, Stamps win two, Smithers rebounds and Terrace wins in a shoot-out over Rampage

Week two of the CIHL regular season continued to demonstrate that the early selectors may have it wrong - as some teams showed resilience and the Terrace River Kings recorded its first win of the season in a shoot-out on home ice, over the Prince Rupert Rampage. The Kitimat Ice Demons were in Williams Lake, with two wins behind them last week v Terrace, to face the Stampeders, with an early season record of two losses... Stamps paraded the Coy Cup pprovincial championship before their fans in this home opener... The Williams Lake Stampeders paraded the Coy Cop, men's AA provincial championship, at their home openers, a 9-8 shootout win over previous Coy Cup champs, the Kitimat Ice Demons. The Stamps completed their weekend with a 5-3 win Sunday. To make this one more exciting the teams seemed to abandon their goaltenders and scored eight times each in regular time on Saturday after the Ice Demons held three and two goal leads -- and it took a Wilfred Robbins goal to give the Stampeders two points in the shootout. Kitimat got one for the tie. The Stampeders started faster on Sunday and ran up five unanswered goals. Demons stormed back in the third, but left it too late and could only notch three goals to allow the Stamps to win 5-3. All in all, a long trip for short-handed Kitimat to pick up only one point. Stampeders were missing suspended Francis Johnson, but Demons were without defensive sparkplug, Jeff Mildenberger. In Terrace, the highly touted Prince Rupert Rampage, after a blowout win, over the Hazelton Wolverines, followed by a surprising shootout loss, started slowly and fell behind Terrace 4-1. The game wound up in a 5-5 tie with Terrace taking its first win on the strength of the shoot-out, 6-5. The Rampage may have to start practicing their one-on-ones. Big fight in this game had them talking on the Forum. The Burns Lake Braves showed they could bounce back by winning both ends of a double header over the Omenica Ice, in the Ice's first outing of the season, by scores of 4-1 Saturday and 5-1 Sunday. On Friday night the Smithers Steelheads dropped a game to Hazelton on the strength of a last minute goal by Trevor Morrison...but the Steelheads, clearly offended by the loss in Hazelton bounced back big time Saturday night to beat up on the Wolverines 8-1. This coming weekend the Ice Demons will be in Prince Rupert Saturday for a single game. The River Kings will be in Hazelton to renew that contentious rivalry and the Bulkley Valley boys, Houston Luckies will see what they can do against the Burns Lake Braves in Burns Lake. There are no Sunday games this weekend. In the early standings the Williams Lake Stampeders hold a one point lead over Burns Lake in the East, while the Smithers Steelheads hold a similar one point edge over the Ice Demons after four games of the season.