Ontario Reign: Three Takeaways From 3-2 OT Loss to San Diego

Goal Breakdown

First period:

ONT: PP Samuel Fagemo (22), ASST: Francesco Pinelli (10)

Second period:

SD: Roland McKeown (11), ASST: Tristan Luneau (35), Josh Lopina (7)

ONT: SH Francesco Pinelli (13), ASST: Jack Studnicka (18)

SD: Yegor Sidorov (15), ASST: Josh Lopina (8), Tyson Hinds (12)

Third period: 

None

Overtime:

SD: Ryan Carpenter (17), ASST: Justin Bailey (14), Roland McKeown (19)

Stats

Goals:

SD: 3

ONT: 2

Shots:

SD: 24

ONT: 36

Power plays:

SD: 0/5

ONT: 1/4

Here are the three takeaways from Friday night’s overtime loss:

Pinelli continues to haunt San Diego and improve in his overall game

Francesco Pinelli continues to haunt the Gulls this year. There’s always that one team a player feasts on when they play, which happens to be the Gulls for Pinelli. Pinelli recorded the only assist on Samuel Fagemo’s power-play goal and posted a short-handed tally for his fourth straight multi-point game against the Gulls. The second-year pro has eight points in six games against Ontario’s SoCal rivals (5 G, 3 A).

But it’s not just torching the Gulls for the young centerman. Pinelli has shown what he is capable of in spurts and has even added toughness to his game this year. It was around this time last season he started to get comfortable and found a home in his role as a fourth-line center. This year, although the points don’t show it, he looks much more confident carrying the puck through the middle of the ice and not deferring to his linemates. After the game, head coach Marco Sturm said he likes the path the 21-year-old is heading down.

“He had a slow start, but the last few months, I thought he was much better, skating better. He’s more involved. He’s still learning and trying to find his way, but I like where he’s heading. We need him right now. We need him on the PK with Madden gone. He’s going to get more opportunities,” Sturm said on the strides Pinelli has made from year one to year two.

As Sturm said, they’ll need him down the stretch and he’ll be getting more opportunities as Samuel Heleniuis is expected to get called back up to the Kings and Tyler Madden being traded last week.

A self-inflicted mistake extends the losing streak to four games

The Reign got one point, but couldn’t grab the second one. A terrible change by the Reign led to the game-winning goal for San Diego. In a three-on-three overtime, you have to be smart when you decide to make a change, and the Reign were anything but that. All three players went off for a change, leading to a scoring chance from Justin Bailey, and, eventually Ryan Carpenter’s fourth overtime goal of the season after three cracks at attempting to put the puck in the net.

While the awful change will get scrutinized, and rightfully so, Sturm didn’t like that Carpenter had three whacks at the puck with all three Reign skaters near him.

“It was a bad change. You can’t change all three of them, first of all. What I didn’t like, and we just mentioned it was the rebounds. I think he [Carpenter] had three whacks at it, and everyone had their sticks in the air,” Sturm said.

Little things like those that can cost you games and can’t happen at this stage of the season. With the division standings being tight and every point being crucial, the Reign left one on the table.

Seven straight starts for Copley

Pheonix Copley made his seventh straight start, the most for him this season. Sturm has done a great job managing the workload of his netminders last year and this season, and with Erik Portillo missing the last two weeks with an injury, it’s thrown a wrinkle into that plan with Sturm relying heavily on Copley and Dryden McKay filling in for the backup role with Portillo sidelined.

Copley has been solid in net in his last 12 starts, posting a .917 save percentage in that span, but with the Reign having another back-to-back this weekend and 11 games in 23 days to finish out March, perhaps a day off for Copley will be needed. The Reign will need Copley to be the number-one goalie down the stretch in Portillo’s absence, but not overworking him this late into the season with plenty of games coming up, including four back-to-back sets, is something the Reign will need to manage carefully and cautiously.

“We’ll see where everyone is at. We have a lot of games coming up, so you have to be smart. There might be a chance you see McKay tomorrow,” Sturm said on the possibility of McKay starting in Saturday’s game.

NOTES:

*Fagemo snapped his 10-game goal drought with his power-play goal in the first period.

*Pinelli’s short-handed tally in the second period matched his goal total from last year. It was his second short-handed goal this season.

*Copley made 21 saves on 24 shots in the defeat.

*Martin Chromiak didn’t finish the game. Although Sturm said the 22-year-old was hurt and tried to go but didn’t feel good, he didn’t have an update on his status. They’ll see how he is today to determine his status for tonight’s game.

*The Reign are 12-8-2-0 after a loss

UP NEXT: The two teams will meet again tonight in San Diego. It’s the final time the Reign will visit Pechanga Arena this season. The game starts at 6 PM PST and can be seen on FloHockey. You can also listen to the game on the ESPN LA app and ontarioreign.com/radio.