Journal & Topics Media Group

Stampede Falls To Lake Forest, 7-2


The combined hockey team of Buffalo Grove/Hersey/Wheeling (BG/H/W) has seen better days. Sure, there have been the good times, like back-to-back state championships the last two seasons. But this year, so far, has been a different story. A painful story to watch, if that.

The Stampede (4-12-1) lost 7-2 Sunday night (Nov. 4) to Lake Forest at West Meadows Ice Arena in Rolling Meadows, showing that a true sign of re-building to get back to championship form is going to take a while. Then again, losing 10 seniors off the club from a season ago certainly does not help matters either.

“We have a lot of kids on this team who came up from junior varsity,” Stampede forward Brendan Buckley said. “So, it is going to take a while for them to adjust to the varsity style of play.”

The past two seasons would normally find the Stampede on the right side of a 7-2 finish, but not this year. At least not yet, anyway.

“Other than our two best players, no one showed up to play today,” Stampede coach Chris Waters said. “We left our goalie out high and dry with no support. We barely got seven minutes out of these kids tonight for a 45-minute game. We have the talent on this team to compete with anyone, but people have to step up.”

Lake Forest did just about everything it wanted to against the Stampede from crisp passing to quality scoring chances to not allowing the Stampede to score while BG/H/W was on the power play. The Stampede would go 0-6 on the man-advantage. If the Stampede could take anything away from the game, it would have been not allowing a power-play goal while killing off three minor penalties.

“The scoreboard did not indicate how poorly we played tonight,” Waters said. “People on this team who were here last year are resting on their laurels right now. This season is totally different. We can’t just show up and because we are BG/H/W, we can’t just walk in here and think we will win just because of who we are. Yes, Lake Forest is having a good season so far (8-2-1) and a new coach is a part of the reason why. But we are not good now.”

Lake Forest scored the first 4 goals of the game all against Stampede starting goalie Evan Wurzbacher, who stopped 20 of the 24 shots he saw over two periods. Waters would pull Wurzbacher in favor of backup goaltender Connor Meehan who allowed 3 more Lake Forest goals over the last 15 minutes of play.

The Stampede would get their 2 goals from senior forward Brooke Ersoy (Buffalo Grove) at the 2:06 mark of the middle frame and senior Brendan Buckley (Hersey) with 14:04 left in regulation.

“A lot of guys we have on this team right now are still not comfortable in their roles currently,” Buckley said. “I would just tell our fans to be patient right now with us while we get things figured out. We will get better.”

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