Wranglers Playoff Game Day: The Pacific Division winner to be decided in game five
11 months ago
The playoff series between the Calgary Wranglers and Coachella Valley Firebirds has had a game to game pattern. The Firebirds won game one, the Wranglers won game two, the Firebirds won game three and the Wranglers won game four. Calgary escaped elimination on Wednesday night with their 1-0 win. With both teams now on the chopping block, will the pattern continue? Or are the Wranglers destined to advance to the next round?
Projected lineups
Calgary
Jakob Pelletier – Cole Schwindt – Matthew Phillips
Dryden Hunt – Connor Zary – Walker Duehr
Brett Sutter – Clark Bishop – Kevin Rooney
Emilio Pettersen – Ben Jones – Adam Klapka
Ilya Solovyov – Nick DeSimone
Jeremie Poirier – Colton Poolman
Kristians Rubins – Yan Kuznetsov
Dustin Wolf
Coachella Valley
Max McCormick – Alexander True – Kole Lind
Cameron Hughes – Luke Henman – Jesper Froden
Carson Twarynski – Ville Petman – Austin Poganski
Tye Kartye – Andrew Poturalski – Jeremy McKenna
Ryker Evans – Matt Tennyson
Gustav Olofsson – Brogan Rafferty
Eddie Wittchow – Jimmy Schuldt
Joey Daccord
Postseason leaders
Calgary
Jakob Pelletier – 8GP, 4G, 3A
Matthew Phillips – 8GP, 1G, 6A
Jeremie Poirier – 8GP, 1G, 6A
Coachella Valley
Kole Lind – 12GP, 7G, 9A
Max McCormick – 12GP, 7G, 8A
Ryker Evans – 12GP, 2G, 10A
Notes and expectations
You couldn’t have drawn up a more even match-up for this Pacific Division series. Both teams have incredible offence, defence, special teams and goaltending and their split record reflects this. What’s been the difference in these first four games is what’s working on one side that’s failing on another side of the ice.
If you tuned into the radio or video stream last game, you heard a common statement by the announcers. Dustin Wolf will stop every shot he sees. Firebirds goaltender, Joey Daccord is very similar in that fashion. These teams have had to have things go right for them between the pipes to reach this point in the season and one goal games have been the story of this series (with the exception of game one). If you’re scoring on these goaltenders, odds are you’ve had to work pretty hard for it.
Now statistically it’s tough to compare these two for their off-season performances as the Firebirds had a whole other series while the Wranglers enjoyed their bye week but here’s how things have looked game-to-game comparing the netminders.
Game one (6-3 CV Win)
Joey Daccord – 32 saves, 0.914 SV%
Dustin Wolf – 16 saves, 0.762 SV%
Oscar Dansk – 7 saves, 0.875 SV%
Game two (3-2 CGY Win)
Joey Daccord – 24 saves, 0.889 SV%
Dustin Wolf – 31 saves, 0.939 SV%
Game three (3-2 CV 3OT Win)
Joey Daccord – 60 saves, 0.968 SV%
Dustin Wolf – 48 saves, 0.941 SV%
Game four (1-0 CGY Win)
Joey Daccord – 31 saves, 0.969 SV%
Dustin Wolf – 27 saves, 1.000 SV%
Both goaltenders have improved their save percentages game to game in the last three match-ups and have really tightened up the opportunities to be scored on. They’ve both carried quite a hefty workload in this series and game five is expected to be no different. As much as they need their teams to score, they also need to continue to battle this marathon of a series. Last game alone, both goalies got a goal back for goaltender interference so it’s no secret their opponents are trying their best to screen them and make their life in net difficult.
Calgary or Coachella Valley will be determined as the Pacific Division winner by the end of Friday night or early Saturday morning if they’re feeling like some extra overtime hockey like game three. Will the Wranglers come back to Calgary to prepare for the Western Conference Finals against either the Texas Stars or Milwaukee Admirals? Or will their impressive inaugural season come to a close?
It’ll all be determined on game five of five on Friday in Palm Springs, CA. Puck drop is set for 8:00 p.m. MT. You can catch the game stream on AHL.tv or the radio broadcast on the Fan960. Multiple FlamesNation members will also have updates on Twitter.
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