The Broncos struggles continued with the Battlefords Saturday night at the Elgar Petersen Arena as the Stars built an early lead and never looked back en route to a 3-1 win.

Humboldt has now lost a dozen consecutive games against the back-to-back Finning Division champions who clinched their title last week.

Layne Young scored his 26th goal of the year 5:19 in, Reed Delainey made it 2-0 before the first was out.

Coby Downs joined the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League 20 goal club at 7:37 of the second stanza essentially burying the Broncos in a 3-0 hole that's almost insurmountable.

Luke Kempf did try to get his team back in the game notching his sixth of the season from Brett Horn and Matthieu Gomercic making it 3-1 just outside thew six minute mark but they couldn't generate anything else on Taryn Kotcheruk in the Stars net. He made 29 saves for his league leading 22nd victory.

Garrett Mason turned aside 28 in the Humboldt net.

"They were the more hungry team," Assistant Coach Brayden Klimosko said on the post game show. "The third period was really good, I don't know if we've seen a better period from us against a Battleford team in the last couple years for sure and I think the big thing we have to do is take the positives out of this and understand what it takes to be a championship team."

It was a tale of missed opportunities rather than utter domination that has been the case in the past 12 meetings. Humboldt had three first period power-plays including a five-on-three but they couldn't beat the league's top penalty killing club and Young answered quickly taking all the momentum with over 1,100 fans at the EPA.

Overall the Broncos were 0/4 with the man advantage, the BNS were scoreless in a pair of chances.

Klimosko says they now have some time to head back to the drawing board.

"We play on Wednesday and then we get another week off so we're going to have some good practices, we're going to have some practices that are hard on the boys and really make sure we're competing at that high level because it's only going to get tougher from here."

That game in Wilcox is an 8 o'clock start, the pre-game show on the radio will be at 7:45.

Elsewhere in the SJHL on Saturday night the Hounds upset Flin Flon 3-2, Nipawin swept a home and home series with Melfort defeating the Mustangs 6-2, Kindersley crushed LaRonge 7-0 and Weyburn soared over Yorkton 4-1.

You can hear Klimosko's complete post game comments below as well as from Antonio DiPaolo who joined Clark Stork during the first intermission.