Wranglers Playoff Game Day: Looking to take the series lead on the road
11 months ago
The Wranglers and Firebirds started their best of five series in Calgary last week where Coachella Valley won the first game and Calgary won the second. With everything evened up, this series has transformed into a best of three series with the Wranglers on the road for the remainder of it. Just two wins is all they need to move onto the conference final and hopefully after coming off a big win, the Wranglers have it in them to earn one of two on Monday night.
Projected lineups
Calgary
Dryden Hunt – Ben Jones – Matthew Phillips
Jakob Pelletier – Cole Schwindt – Walker Duehr
Brett Sutter – Clark Bishop – Kevin Rooney
Emilio Pettersen – Connor Zary – Adam Klapka
Ilya Solovyov – Nick DeSimone
Jeremie Poirier – Colton Poolman
Kristians Rubins – Josh Brook
Dustin Wolf
Coachella Valley
Kole Lind – Alexander True – Max McCormick
Jeremy McKenna – Cameron Hughes – Luke Henman
Carsen Twarynski – Ville Petman – Austin Poganski
David Goyette – Shane Wright – Nick Pastujov
Ryker Evans – Matt Tennyson
Eddie Wittchow – Jimmy Schuldt
Gustav Olofsson – Brogan Rafferty
Joey Daccord
Postseason leaders
Calgary
Matthew Phillips – 6GP, 1G, 5A
Jeremie Poirier – 6GP, 1G, 5A
Jakob Pelletier – 6GP, 3G, 2A
Coachella Valley
Kole Lind – 10GP, 7G, 8A
Max McCormick – 10GP, 6G, 7A
Ryker Evans – 10GP, 1G, 9A
Notes and expectations
This game is the only AHL action on Monday night and what we know at this point is they’ll for sure need to play out two more games and up to three if they split once again. The Wranglers made some adjustments in game two that paid off for them. Some minor line changes and two defensive substitutions gave them the lineup that helped find them success. For line changes, Jakob Pelletier dropped down to the second line and Dryden Hunt slid up to the top line, where he was before Pelletier was sent back down from the Flames in the regular season.
There may be more substitutions but coming off a win, I wouldn’t be surprised if everything stays the same. Josh Brook and Kristians Rubins played a great game on the blue line in place of Nicolas Meloche and Yan Kuznetsov on Friday. Meloche and Kuznetsov have had the more regular playing time through the regular season so that’s got to come into consideration when it comes to developing a lineup. Still, the more important thing for this team is to put their best effort out to win. That may look different lineup wise night to night.
Another promising sight from their last game was Connor Zary finally getting that monkey off his back so to speak and scoring his first goal of the postseason. The talent of Zary does not go unnoticed but his contributions to the Wranglers’ playoff run this year have been very bleak. This was until he absolutely danced circles around his opponents and scored the opening goal for his team in game two.
Some of the regular scorers are climbing the right way too. Matthew Phillips is back up to the top of team scoring with Jakob Pelletier close behind. Dryden Hunt and Adam Klapka have been a bit of a surprise through this stretch for the Calder Cup with some very timely goals. Things feel as if they are starting to click into place again and the Wranglers are finding the game that made them so successful through the regular season.
Game three is set to take place in Palm Springs on Monday night at 8:00 p.m. MT. Video broadcasts are available on AHL.tv for a fee or on the local radio station the Fan960. Multiple FlamesNation members will also have game updates on Twitter.
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