The Calgary Wranglers wrapped up their four game season series against the Manitoba Moose in a noon game on Sunday. The Wranglers had a 2-1-0-0 edge in the series after winning Friday’s game 7-2. Calgary wasn’t able to take the lead all game despite it being close and the Moose ended up pulling ahead in the third to win 4-2. They ended up spliting the weekend series and the season series overall.

Wranglers lines

Dryden Hunt – Justin Kirkland – Martin Frk

Brennan Othmann – Sam Morton – William Stromgren

Carter King – Clark Bishop – Aydar Suniev

Alex Gallant – David Silye – Carter Wilkie

Artem Grushnikov – Daniil Miromanov

Nick Cicek – Gavin White

Etienne Morin – Simon Mack

Arsenii Sergeev

Game at a glance

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Calgary rolled with the same lineup as Friday’s game. They went back to Arsenii Sergeev for this start and on the other end, the Moose switched things up to put Thomas Milic in net. Calgary had some good jump to them right from puck drop and took up some early zone time in their first couple of shifts. The Moose got the first few shots on goal and just past the five minute mark, things were getting a bit feisty. After Sergeev covered up a puck, Nick Cicek and Brayden Yager got into it a bit, but it wasn’t enough to draw a penalty for either side.

The first penalty of the game didn’t come until 9:09, when Alex Gallant took down a Moose skater behind the play and was called for charging. The Wranglers killed this one off, but right as it expired, Nick Cicek was called for high sticking and they were right back to penalty killing. This one was also killed off and the Wranglers got a brealaway going the other way. David Silye was leading the charge and passed it back to Aydar Suniev, who was stopped, then Nick Cicek went for a shot that he rang off the crossbar. This sequence was Calgary’s best chance of the first period up until that point.

The Moose struck first with a point shot from Isaak Phillips that deflected off Segeev’s pads and went into the back of the net. This goal came at 14:57. Shortly after this goal, Brennan Othmann and Artem Grushnikov were getting pushed around a bit on the ice and Othmann had enough. He and Isaak Phillips dropped the gloves.

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They both went back to the locker room after this one, as there was only 4:11 left in the frame. At 19:22, the Moose were called for holding and the Wranglers went on their first power play of the game. Just five seconds into this opportunity, Justin Kirkland jumped on a rebound from Daniil Miromanov and evened up the scoring. Dryden Hunt also picked up an assist on this goal.

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At the end of the first, the score was 1-1 and shots were an even 13-13. Early in the second, Artem Grushnikov and a Moose player hit each other and Grushnikov got the blade of a stick to the face. He was attended to on the bench and able to come out for his next shift. After this, the Wranglers were looking for a high sticking call, but didn’t get one.

The efforts between each side were pretty streaky, then the next goal came at 11:11 when Jaret Anderson-Dolan beat Sergeev on a back door play. There wasn’t a lot of high danger activity for the rest of the period and by the end of 40 minutes, the Moose held on to their 2-1 lead and shots were 13-10 in the middle frame.

Just 36 seconds into the third period, Parker Ford of the Moose was called for tripping and the Wranglers had a good few looks on this opportunity. After the power play came to a close, Sam Morton had a chance that landed on top of the net.

At 4:59, the Wranglers found a goal with a deflection from Carter Wilkie. The goal was initially announced as Alex Gallant’s, but Carter Wilkie thought he had a touch on it too. After the end of the game, the scoring changed to Wilkie and Gallant and Cicek picked up the assists.

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Calgary kept trying to get the next one and just past the midway mark of the third, they exceeded 40 shots on goal. Around the 13 minute mark, Justin Kirkland was on a breakaway looking for another two-goal game and Milic made a good glove save to shut him down.

At 14:23, the Moose pulled ahead again with a goal from Dylan Anhorn. Calgary tried to get back in it and pulled Arsenii Sergeev for the extra attacker at 17:47. They then took a timeout with just 1:24 remaining in regulation. At 18:57, the Moose scored on the empty net and that about put the game away.

Dryden Hunt got into a bit of a scrum in the last nine seconds and was called for roughing. He was also tagged with an additional 10 minute misconduct for continuing the altercation. Martin Frk served his penalty to wrap up the game. The Wranglers fell 4-2 and shots finished 46-37 for Calgary. Alex Gallant was the only Wrangler on the three stars, picking up the third star of the night.

Carter Wilkie talked to the media after the game with an evaluation of their performance. At this point, he wasn’t 100% sure if that goal went to him or Gallant. He said:

“I thought we had a good game. There were certain stretches where they kind of put it on us and we weren’t really up to our systems and weren’t following through with our game plan. It ended up costing us a bit and giving them some momentum but I thought we had some good stretches there and some bad ones as well so we just gotta clean those up.”

Scoring stat summary

Dryden Hunt – 1A

Carter Wilkie – 1G

Alex Gallant – 1A

Justin Kirkland – 1G

Daniil Miromanov – 1A

Nick Cicek – 1A

Highlights

Next up

The Wranglers continue their homestand into next week for a very important series against the Henderson Silver Knights. The Silver Knights are one of the teams ahead of Calgary in the playoff push and taking a few points away from them would be greatly beneficial. This will be a mid-week series starting on Tuesday and wrapping up on Thursday. Puck drop for both games is 7:00 p.m. MT.