Recap: Calgary Wranglers drop third straight on Barracuda teddy bear toss night
7 months ago
It was teddy bear toss night in San Jose as the Calgary Wranglers and San Jose Barracuda faced off for their second game in as many nights. The Wranglers were looking to switch things up a bit to get their scoring going and hopefully get a win back on the weekend but were not successful in those efforts. This was another one of those games where their missing assets who are injured or playing for the Flames were very noticeably missed. They fell for their third straight game with a final score of 5-2.
Lineup notes
The Wranglers coaching staff made a few changes in Saturday’s game after failing to register a goal in their previous game. Connor Murphy got his first AHL start and Oscar Dansk got the night off in relief. Also making his debut with the Wranglers was Jarrod Gourley. Gourley has played in this league before with the Utica Comets and finally got his opportunity with Calgary. Jarrod Gourley replaced Will Riedell in the lineup.
There were a couple of changes up front as well. Lucas Ciona and Ilya Nikolaev were scratched in this game and were replaced with Mark Duarte and William Stromgren.
Game at a glance
The game got going with the same kind of tension their previous game finished off with. They seemed to get it out of their system in the first few minutes without any major penalty calls. Things were kept pretty even until Brady Lyle scored the opening goal at the end of a power play at 10:39. It happened the exact second the penalty ended so it was not recorded as a special teams goal.
Lyle got a shot off from the point that San Jose netminder, Magnus Chrona never really had a good look at. Emilio Pettersen and Matt Coronato assisted on this opening marker.
Just under two minutes later, the Barracuda answered back with their opening goal of the night at 12:29. Ethan Cardwell deflected a puck in and the teddy bears hit the ice. There was a bit of an understandable delay then the game was back in action.
Later in the period, Colton Poolman was called for holding then Mark Pysyk was called on a double minor for high sticking. This five-on-three was not an ideal scenario for Calgary and San Jose capitalized before the end of Poolman’s time in the penalty box.
At 17:32 Danil Gushchin scored off a one-timer and earned the home team their first lead of the evening. By the end of 20 minutes, the score was 2-1 and the Barracuda outshot the Wranglers 12-6.
In the second, the scoring slowed down and a string of San Jose penalties was the story of the opening few minutes of the middle frame. Cole Cassels was called for holding 24 seconds in, Tanner Kaspick was called for high-sticking at 1:07 and Scott Sabourin was called for high-sticking at 1:51. The Wranglers earned a six-second five on three after the first two calls then were back with a two-man advantage for 15 seconds with the third Barracuda call. With how big of an opportunity this string of penalties was for Calgary, they were unable to find a way to capitalize.
Instead, it would be San Jose who would score on the power play once again. Adam Klapka took a high-sticking double minor at 10:37 and soon after coming out of the box was called for slashing. About a minute later, the third Barracuda goal was in the back of the net. This one was scored by Scott Sabourin off a tip-in at 15:52.
At the end of two complete periods, the Wranglers trailed 3-1 and outshot their opponents 10-6 in the second. In the third, hopes for a Calgary comeback started when Ben Jones scored off a rebound at 8:39. Matt Coronato picked up his second helper of the night on this tally and Dryden Hunt also assisted.
The Barracuda would once again regain their two-goal lead with another marker at 12:36. They broke up the Wranglers’ puck possession and skated right into the zone to beat Murphy bar down. This did cause the visiting team to wake up and try to crawl back into the game but did not change their side of the score.
Connor Murphy skated off with three minutes to go and the Wranglers got a few more shots but did not find the back of the net. With 21 seconds to go in regulation, Cole Cassels scored on the empty net and put this game away.
The final score was 5-2 and the Wranglers finished with a 29-22 lead in shots. Calgary’s power play went zero for eight in this game and San Jose’s went two for nine.
Scoring stat summary
Ben Jones – 1G
Dryden Hunt – 1A
Brady Lyle – 1G
Matt Coronato – 2A
Emilio Pettersen – 1A
Next up
Calgary will continue to play on the road until after Christmas and have three games against two different opponents next week. They’ll play the Bakersfield Condors next on Wednesday before heading to Colorado to play the Eagles on the weekend. Their next game in Bakersfield, CA is set to start at 7:30 p.m. MT.
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