Wallaceburg Lakers Optimistic Despite Early Struggles

After starting your first four games winless, many teams might look for knee jerk solutions, but the Wallaceburg Lakers realize they are re-building, and understand there will be growing pains early in the season.

“Right now, a goal for our team is to get better every time we are on the ice,” said Wallaceburg Lakers head coach BJ Charpentier. “I think it’s too early to make any sort of predictions as to how we may finish, we have only played against 3 different teams. As for success, I don’t think it is a goal of ours, but if we continue to work hard and improve, hopefully success will be a result of the work we put in.”

The Wallaceburg Lakers lost four players from last seasons team to overage, and another seven to the Junior B ranks. According to Charpentier however, the new Lakers roster has several hard working, local players, who he feels will learn from this early season slump,

“Having some of the young players from Wallaceburg stepping up to play a bigger role and playing well has been a big positive. Their work ethic and positive attitude has really kept us in games that we maybe shouldn’t have been in early on. Having them experience this early in the season should make us a stronger team later on.”

Of the remaining veterans from last season, two players in the eyes of Charpentier have really stepped up to take new roles that are helping to keep the Lakers competitive.

“Tyson Isaac has been a leader on the team for a couple years now, but he has taken his all around game to another level with some of our other veterans being out of the line up,” Charpentier said.

“And Jordan Durston has been huge for us, switching to D and excelling at it. Having him back there as a leader on our team gives us a whole new element, and we have shown improvement each game, which is what we want early in the season.”

With four losses in their first four games, the Lakers know the season will be an uphill battle, and that their are many places they can improve, but these are challenges this young team are willing to face.

“As a team we have to work on our play in the defensive end, winning battles for lose pucks and giving our offence a chance to do something. And of course, only having played 4 games, we need to continue working on conditioning and and hopefully everything else will fall into place as we move forward.”

Wallaceburg next plays Mooretown tonight (Saturday) on the road, before returning home Wednesday to face the Kingsville Comets.