Weekly Wrap-Up: Reign Rally to Maintain Place in Pacific
- Updated: February 27, 2017
With two wins and one loss last week – showing up as a different type of team from one game to the next – the Ontario Reign find themselves at 28-14-8-0, maintaining its tie for second with the San Diego Gulls, six points behind the league-leading San Jose Barracuda. The team next meets the Stockton Heat at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 1 at the Stockton Arena.
Rolling on its way to an apparent playoff birth, the Reign played Wednesday, February 22 skunking the Tucson Roadrunners 3-0. Goalie Jack Campbell tallied his second shutout of the season, stopping all of Tucson’s 29 shots in his 33rd straight start. The Reign scored three on 27 shots, one in each period, including goals from T.J. Hensick, Sean Backman and Mike Amadio. Birthday boy head coach Mike Stothers said of his netminder, “It’s not so much about the shutouts, but the wins. He gets the job done for us. For as well as I thought we played in front of him, he still had to make some tough saves.”
Two days later, the Reign would come up short in a heart-breaker versus the Bakersfield Condors, giving up two goals 21 seconds apart in the last five minutes of the game, losing 4-3. Outshot 40-24, the Reign took a 3-2 lead into the third, with an outstanding record of 20-0-2-0 when carrying such a lead entering the final period. Make it now 20-1-2-0.
The team would have to mount a return to the win column on Sunday, February 26, beating the Rockford IceHogs 5-4. Starting his 35th straight game, Campbell made 16 saves on 20 shots, improving his record to 25-11-5. Jonny Brodzinski posted his 21st goal, which leads the Reign.
The inconsistent play from one game to the next puzzled Stothers. Through the Ontario Reign insider, he said, “The question I asked was which team are we? Are we the team that wins three-nothing against Tucson, or are we the team that loses 4-3 in Bakersfield? What are we? We can’t have the fluctuation in our play. There’s a certain way we’ve got to play and when we do, we usually have some kind of success. When we don’t, everybody gets disappointed.”
With the return of Jonathan Quick to the starting role with the NHL affiliate Los Angeles Kings, space was opened up for some shifting around of goalies. Peter Budaj was traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning for Ben Bishop, pushing Jeff Zatkoff to the Reign where he backed up Campbell. Said Stothers, “I’m not sure that Soupy (Campbell) can play every game between now and the end of the season. I don’t have to say anything because we don’t play until Wednesday.”
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