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Recap: Wranglers’ road success continues in 7-3 win over Gulls

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Photo credit:Candice Ward/Calgary Wranglers
Paige Siewert
1 year ago
The Calgary Wranglers started their road trip on Friday night against the San Diego Gulls. They were set to play Justin Kirkland and Glenn Gawdin, who were Stockton Heat standouts in last year’s season.
As it turned out, they only got half a reunion with Gawdin out of this lineup (presumably for call-up reasons). Either way, the reunion pleasantries were short-lived with the Wranglers taking a 7-3 win in their first game of the series.

Game at a glance

It was a heavily productive game with a combined total of 10 goals on the night. Things kicked off very quickly with the Gulls getting on the board first in the opening minute of the game. The game’s first shot resulted in this goal and the Wranglers were chasing a lead early.
Fortunately for Calgary, they brought their scoring to this game and answered back 6:53 into the first period with a goal by Radim Zohorna. Matthew Phillips and Jakob Pelletier assisted on this first marker for the Wranglers. This assist put Pelletier at his 11th game in a row in his active scoring streak.
The scoring continued through the first with the next goal coming off the stick of Martin Pospisil 8:10 into the period. Pospisil’s first goal of the season was assisted by Emilio Pettersen and Connor Zary and put the Wranglers in the lead 2-1.
Just over two minutes later, the Gulls found themselves on the power play and evened things up on the scoreboard once again. Even with two goals aside, the first period scoring was still not complete.
16:54 into the period, Ben Jones lit the lamp and took back the reigns on the Wranglers’ momentum. Brett Sutter and Ilya Solovyov picked up the helpers on Jones’ fifth of the year.
The period was coming to a close and yet, the Wranglers still had one more goal in the tank. Walker Duehr capitalized on a late power play opportunity and brought Calgary’s score up to 4-2 going into the first intermission. Shots favoured Calgary 10-7.
In the second, the pace of scoring slowed down but did not come to a complete halt. Martin Pospisil picked up another goal on the night 4:38 into the second with Radim Zohorna and Jakob Pelletier also picking up their second points of the night with the assists.
Wranglers’ player of the week and month, Matthew Phillips kept it rolling for the team and himself with a goal at the 13-minute mark. Phillips’ 14th goal of the season kept his hold on the league leads for goals and points and put Calgary up 6-2.
1:07 later, his old teammate Justin Kirkland, showed he’s still got his scoring genes and beat Dustin Wolf to put the Gulls within three goals. The second half of the second period was quite from a goal standpoint with a few minor penalties causing the notable stoppages.
Going into the third, the Wranglers were up 6-3 and leading in shots 21-14. Brett Sutter scored a mere 22 seconds into the period and put the Wranglers score up to 7-3, that would end up being the final score on the night.
Radim Zohorna picked up the first star of the night with a goal and two assists. Martin Pospisil was recognized as the third star of the night with two goals. Justin Kirkland’s two-point night put him in the middle with the second star recognition.
Dustin Wolf picked up his ninth win in the last two games only facing 22 shots and stopping 19 of them.

Next up

The Wranglers won’t need much of a long memory going into their next game as they stay in town to take on the Gulls for their second game of the weekend series on Saturday night. Game time is set for 8:00 p.m. (MT) and you can stream it live or on demand on AHL.TV.

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