The Calgary Wranglers continued their road trip this week with a stop in Bakersfield, CA to face the Oilers’ AHL affiliate, the Condors. This game was kept pretty close for the majority of the competition, but a push at the end to try and score the equalizer turned into two empty net goals for the home team. Calgary fell in their second straight game with a final score of 5-2.

Lineup notes

Rory Kerins returned to the Wranglers for this game after his two game stint with the Flames. Between him returning and Sam Honzek getting injured, that gave two other AHLers a chance with the big club. That was Dryden Hunt and Sam Morton.

Other changes included Lucas Ciona, Artem Grushnikov, and Simon Mack coming out of the lineup. New faces (other than Kerins) that returned to the lineup for this game included Parker Bell, Turner Ottenbreit, Etienne Morin, and Andrew Basha.

Wranglers lines

Matvei Gridin – Rory Kerins – Martin Frk

Carter King – Justin Kirkland – Aydar Suniev

Andrew Basha – Clark Bishop – William Stromgren

Alex Gallant – David Silye – Parker Bell

Turner Ottenbreit – Hunter Brzustewicz

Etienne Morin – Daniil Miromanov

Nick Cicek – Jeremie Poirier

Ivan Prosvetov

Game at a glance

Calgary swapped back to Ivan Prosvetov in net for this game after Owen Say got the start in their last game on Sunday. For the Condors, they went with Connor Ingram in net. The Wranglers struck first when Martin Frk was on the doorstep and dove to push the puck into the net. Matvei Gridin and Nick Cicek assisted.

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The Condors quickly took this the other way. 22 seconds later to be exact. Quinn Hutson took a shot and Isaac Howard flipped a backhand over Prosvetov to even this game up once again. After this goal, Bakersfield found some more momentum and filled the back half of the frame with chances in the offensive zone.

By the end of the first, Calgary and Bakersfield were tied 1-1 and the Condors had a 9-6 edge in shots. Matvei Gridin led the charge in the second period with three shots in his first shift. Clark Bishop followed that up with a couple of chances of his own. Then the Condors took the first penalty of the game at 1:54.

At 3:07, William Stromgren scored the go ahead goal on the power play. Ivan Prosvetov played the puck up from behind his net and Martin Frk got his pass up to William Stromgren, who was a few big steps ahead of the closest Condors in the zone. Stromgren sprung on the breakaway and scored on a hard wrist shot off the post and in. Ivan Prosvetov got his first point of the season for his involvement in this play.

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Just over a minute later, Clark Bishop was called for tripping and the Condors scored a power play goal of their own off a rebound. Just about a minute and a half later, the home team took the lead with another marker on the rebound. This time from Josh Samanski.

Calgary had a couple more chances on the power play before the end of the period but the Condors taking the lead, left them a little stunned. By the end of the second, the Wranglers were down 3-2 but led 10-8 in shots in the middle frame.

There was a pretty even effort from both sides to start the third and at 10:11 Martin Frk was called for tripping. The Wranglers only needed to kill four seconds of this penalty before Rhett Pitlick was called for hooking, putting these teams on a four on four. Both penalties expired and play continued.

At 17:16, Brett Sutter called a timeout and opted to pull Ivan Prosvetov for the offensive zone faceoff. Bakersfield got possession back and Roby Jarventie scored on the empty net 11 seconds after Prosvetov took a seat. Prosvetov came back out then went back to the bench at 18:05 when Calgary was able to corral the puck. At 18:23, the Condors scored their second empty netter and Prosvetov went back between the pipes for the rest of the game.

Calgary got two more shots on Ingram before the end of regulation and when the final buzzer sounded, they fell by an official score of 5-2. Shots finished 27-26 for the Wranglers.

Scoring stat summary

William Stromgren – 1G

Matvei Gridin – 1A

Martin Frk – 1G, 1A

Nick Cicek – 1A

Ivan Prosvetov – 1A

Next up

The travel continues for Calgary as they play another two games in California this weekend. Their next match up will be against the San Diego Gulls on Saturday at 7:00 p.m. MT.