The Calgary Wranglers kicked off their last regular season series on Wednesday night with an evening match-up against the Abbotsford Canucks. They were without their starter, Dustin Wolf, but that was only a temporary absence. Wolf was called up Wednesday morning and stayed in Calgary to get his first NHL start for the Flames against the San Jose Sharks. The Wranglers are going to look forward to having him back as they fell 2-0 to the Canucks and snapped their seven game winning streak.
Game at a glance
Oscar Dansk got the start in net for the Wranglers with Arturs Silovs in net for the Canucks on the other end. Matt Radomsky backed up Dansk in Wolf’s absence. The game opened up with both teams pretty much going shot for shot and nothing giving until about three quarters of the way through the first.
The Abbotsford Canucks scored first 14:37 into the opening period. This would be the only goal in the first period and shots finished 10-9 for Abbotsford. The second period was another story. Oscar Dansk stopped 21/22 shots through the second frame. The Wranglers on the other hand? Only put up a pair of shots on their own through the whole 20 minutes.
Only Ben Jones and Nick DeSimone got shots off in the second period and that just wasn’t good enough. Dansk let in another goal later in the period and this was one he really didn’t get a good look at. 12:52 into the second, the Canucks scored their second of the night on the power play and Dansk was almost completely screened.
Being outshot 22-2 is very uncharacteristic of the Wranglers. So is being down 2-0 after 40 minutes of play. In the third, things got a little controversial. Just shy of the midway mark, Dryden Hunt and Alex Gallant sandwiched themselves in between an Abbotsford skater and he was very slow to get up.
Upon further review, Gallant actually ended up colliding with his opponent in the form of a headshot and this was missed by the on-ice officials. The Abbotsford fans had a roar of boos and this play was looked at after the fact. It will likely be looked at again by the league to decide if there is any disciplinary action against Gallant in the upcoming days.
No official call was made on this play but Gallant paid for it in a different way. A way that involved dropping the gloves. He fought Alex Kannok Leipert in quite a heavy weight tilt. Both sides landed some pretty hard punches and this turned out to be quite a fight.
There wasn’t much of a push back from the Wranglers and they were shutout in the first game of this series. Matthew Phillips led the team in shots with four on the night but was unable to continue his nine game point streak he had going into this game.
The final score was 2-0 and they were outshot 39-17. Not the typical play you expect from the Wranglers but some new blood coming in for the final two games will hopefully ignite some momentum to help them clinch the Pacific and prime themselves for playoff time.
Next up
This series continues into the weekend with two games left in the Wranglers’ regular season. Reinforcements from the Flames are expected to be sent down in time for the weekend games. Their next match-up will be on Friday night and continue into Saturday. Both game times are set for 8:00 p.m. MT.
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