Recap: Mitch McLain’s three point night leads Calgary Wranglers to first win over Henderson
1 year ago
The Calgary Wranglers are on the road for the weekend to play two games against two different opponents. The first kicked off on Saturday night against the Henderson Silver Knights. Going into this game, the Silver Knights were ahead 2-0 in the season series but the Wranglers have cut that series lead in half with a 6-2 win.
Lineup notes
With the Calgary Flames officially on the All-Star break until Feb. 6, the team announced some roster updates to send their AHL call-ups back down to get some games in while the big club is off.
This included the return of Jakob Pelletier, Walker Duehr, and Dennis Gilbert to the roster on paper but Duehr was the only one of the three in the lineup for this first game of the weekend. Darryl Sutter also joined the team for the weekend per Wes Gilbertson.
Game at a glance
Oscar Dansk started the night between the pipes for the Wranglers. The Wranglers got a good start in this game doubling up the Silver Knights in shots in the first period and scoring the opening goal. Mitch McLain continued his offensive run as of late and scored the first goal on the power play 18:09 into the first period.
McLain is up to points in four straight games and has perfected the positioning tight to the net to tap in some timely goals. This opening goal by McLain was assisted by a feed from Emilio Pettersen and Jeremie Poirier.
McLain also dropped the gloves before the period came to a close. The first period finished up with the Wranglers ahead 1-0 and they outshot the Silver Knights 12-6. In the second period, the scoring continued for Calgary.
Brett Sutter took the puck all the way into the zone 7:14 into the period and scored an unassisted goal to further the Wranglers’ lead.
Later in the period, the Wranglers got a lucky rebound that bounced off Henderson’s netminder and deflected off the body of Clark Bishop to put the Wranglers up 3-0. Nick DeSimone and Ilya Solovyov assisted on Bishop’s goal.
1:04 later, McLain scored again off a backhand shot the Henderson goaltender lost control of and it slipped past the goal line. Ben Jones and Yan Kuznetsov assisted.
The Wranglers had a comfortable lead after 40 minutes of play being up 4-0. The Silver Knights must’ve gotten quite the pep talk in the second intermission as they came out flying early in the third.
They scored 2:53 into the period and again 30 seconds later they scored again. Very quickly, this game went from a 4-0 to 4-2 game. Thankfully, the Wranglers stopped the bleeding and that was the extent of the Henderson scoring they saw in this game.
7:27 into the third period, Walker Duehr made it to the scoreboard with a goal in his first game back with the Wranglers. Ben Jones and Mitch McLain assisted, thus completing McLain’s Gordie Howe hat trick on the night.
Duehr scored once more before the game came to an end when Henderson pulled their goalie and he took a shot on the empty net. His second of the night came 18:41 into the third period. That completed the scoring for the night.
The Wranglers won 6-2 to start their comeback in the season series. They only trail by one game now 2-1. Calgary also finished with the edge in shots 36-25 and Dansk picked up his fifth win on the year. He was also recognized as the third star of the night. Ben Jones was awarded the second star and Mitch McLain was awarded the first star.
Next up
The Wranglers are back in action on Sunday night with a very familiar opponent. They’ll play the Ontario Reign again after splitting their series with them earlier this week. Their last game ended in a 3-2 overtime loss. They’ll play the last game of their quick road trip at 6:00 p.m. MT on Sunday.
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