Calgary Wranglers Recap: Dustin Wolf holds the Canucks to one in AHL return
5 months ago
The Calgary Wranglers and Abbotsford Canucks kicked off their long weekend series with some Saturday night hockey. This was their first meeting since Dec. 29 and after a busy inaugural season against each other and a playoff series in 2022-23, a little space between these teams didn’t hurt. Calgary had a great game with their all-star netminder back and picked up a 2-1 win.
Game at a glance
Dustin Wolf made his return to the Wranglers lineup on Saturday and faced Arturs Silovs on the Canucks end of things. Abbotsford had some of the early opportunities in the offensive zone, but once this game got going, both sides were pretty much keeping pace with each other in the shots category. No game-changing action really took place until 14:42 in the opening frame.
Cole Schwindt instigated a fight against Tristen Nielsen and was tagged with a trio of penalties as a result. The final calls ended up being a two-minute instigating minor, a five-minute fighting major and a 10-minute misconduct. All for about six seconds of fighting. The reason for this was actually in defence of Matt Coronato, who was taken down by an open-ice hit from Nielsen.
While these two served their penalties, a couple of other minor calls were dealt in the last five minutes of the frame but didn’t cause any scoring for either side. The Canucks and Wranglers were scoreless after 20 minutes of play and Abbotsford had a 12-10 edge in shots.
In the second period, Jonathan Aspirot was dealt an early tripping penalty. After a successful penalty kill, Aatu Raty was called for hooking and Calgary opened the scoring on this power play. At 4:35, William Stromgren scored his second goal of the season off a shot from the faceoff dot he slipped past Silovs short side. Jonathan Aspirot and Emilio Pettersen set up Stromgren for this power play marker.
That was the only scoring in the middle frame and at the end of 40 minutes, the Wranglers had a 1-0 lead. They also out-shot the Canucks 11-10 in the second period. In the third, Calgary continued to protect their narrow lead for the first half of the period and finally pulled ahead at 11:30.
Jonathan Aspirot, Matt Coronato, and Cole Schwindt came up on a three-on-two, passed the puck around their opposing defenders and finished off the play with a one-timer from Schwindt.
A few minutes later, Abbotsford broke Dustin Wolf’s shutout and put up a goal from Marc Gatcomb. John Stevens attempted a wraparound and Gatcomb got a piece of the rebound to cut Calgary’s lead in half. This goal came at 15:49.
At 17:50, Abbotsford pulled Silovs for the extra attacker and about a minute later, they were on a power play. With just 1:05 to go in regulation, a timeout was called by the Canucks to strategize for their six-on-four. While the Wranglers were drawing up their play, the in-arena cameras were zoomed in on their whiteboard. Cole Schwindt caught onto this and hid it with his glove. Sneaky move by their opponents.
That little camera trick didn’t affect the outcome and the Wranglers ended up protecting their one goal lead to the end of regulation. The score finished up 2-1 for Calgary and shots were 30-27 for Abbotsford. Two Wranglers were recognized in the three stars with Dustin Wolf picking up the first star for his 29-save night and Jonathan Aspirot picking up the second star for his two-assist night.
Scoring stat summary
Cole Schwindt – 1G
Matt Coronato – 1A
William Stromgren – 1G
Emilio Pettersen – 1A
Jonathan Aspirot – 2A
Next up
These two will have a day between their next match-up with game two taking place on Family Day Monday. They play in the afternoon time slot for a 3:00 p.m. MT start time.
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