Stampohar heads for USHL

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
John Stampohar wasn’t on the bus when the Kamloops Blazers pulled out of the Interior Savings Centre parking lot this morning and headed for Everett.
The Blazers will meet the Silvertips there tonight and then move on to Kent, Wash., and a Friday night engagement with the Seattle Thunderbirds.
Stampohar, a 19-year-old winger who was acquired from the Medicine Hat Tigers on Oct. 8, has been reassigned to the USHL’s Fargo, N.D., Force.
“To have a 19-year-old guy on your fourth line and in and out of the lineup just doesn’t make sense,” Blazers general manager Craig Bonner said Tuesday. “We thought it was worth taking a chance bringing him in if he was going to play the way he has to to be in the league, but he just doesn’t do it all the time.”
Stampohar, 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, had three assists and nine penalty minutes in 10 games with the Blazers. He had been a healthy scratch in three of the club’s last five games.
“I don’t think he was that surprised,” Bonner said. “It wasn’t a good fit for either party.”
Stampohar, who is from Hibbing, Minn., was acquired for forward Cole Grbavac, 18, who had left the Blazers and asked for a trade. Grbavac, a Calgarian, played two games with the Tigers and then went home.
Scott Ferguson, the Blazers’ interim head coach, said Stampohar’s departure opens up more ice time for younger players.
“It’s unfortunate that it didn’t work out but, at the same time,” Ferguson said, “it gives a chance for our young guys to play. It’s not that he wasn’t trying in his mind, but we needed more out of him. He wasn’t giving us what we needed, so it’s time to let him go and let a young guy step up.”
The Blazers go into tonight’s game having lost three in a row overall, and six straight on the road. They are 3-11-0-0 since opening the season 7-1-2-0.
The Silvertips (12-6-1-0) are fourth in the Western Conference and are 6-3-1-0 in their last 10 outings. The Blazers (10-12-2-0) are tied for seventh with the Chilliwack Bruins. Kamloops is 2-8-0-0 over its last 10 games.
And the Blazers will turn to goaltender Jon Groenheyde in hopes that he can provide something of a lift. He went the distance in a 7-2 loss to the visiting Seattle Thunderbirds on Friday, with Justin Leclerc doing the same in a 6-1 loss to the Chiefs in Spokane on Saturday.
Ferguson said he intends to rotate his goaltenders, although if “someone gets on a roll, we’ll seriously consider” going with the hot hand.
“We’ll wait and see,” Ferguson said, “but we need a spark right now.”
For now, Ferguson and assistant coach Geoff Smith are trying to figure out why a team that practises well can’t carry that into games.
“The practices leading up to Seattle and Spokane, we played really well,” Ferguson said, “but for whatever reason we came out flat in the games. We had good first periods and then imploded in the second. When you have a bad second, no matter what you do in the third it’s hard to make it up.”
Ferguson feels one of the problems is that his forwards are too quick to make the transition to offence.
“We think we need to score goals,” he explained, “when our focus has to be to do as much as we can defensively, make sure we’re making smart plays to get into their zone, then let the next line get out there and hopefully we can catch a team that has a longer shift and get our offence going.
“We have offensive talent . . . we’re just not focusing hard enough on the defensive side of the puck.
“Six goals a game (against) is just too much.”
The Blazers have surrendered a WHL-high 112 goals. Only the Prince George Cougars, who are 3-17-1-1, are in the same neighbourhood, at 111.
JUST NOTES: Kamloops D Tyler Hansen (flu) is healthy again and could play tonight. . . . Only C Dalibor Bortnak (spleen) remains on the Blazers’ injured list. He is to undergo tests on Monday and hopes to play shortly after that. “He has looked good in practice,” said Ferguson. Bortnak was injured during training camp so has yet to play this season. . . . Bonner got some good news yesterday in the form of report cards for the players who are in high school. “They are one smart group. The school kid’s are good,” he said. “I was pretty happy.”
The Cougars placed F Tyler Halliday, a 20-year-old Kamloopsian, on waivers Tuesday. The Cougars were carrying four 20-year-olds and this gets them down to the maximum of three. Halliday had seven points in 19 games this season. Bonner said the Blazers aren’t interested in Halliday “at this point.” . . . The Cougars three 20-year-olds are D Dallas Jackson, F Alex Rodgers and D Garrett Thiessen. The latter two are former Blazers players.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
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