Series Preview: Wranglers resume road trip in Abbotsford

The Calgary Wranglers have had nearly a week since their last game to break up their 10 game road series nicely. Despite the fact they return to play the reigning Calder Cup Champions, this series is actually leaning in their favour. Calgary won the last two games against the Canucks over a month ago with final scores of 3-0 and 2-1. Abbotsford hasn’t been scoring much and currently sits last in the division. Their revolving door of injuries at the NHL level has seemed to have made it hard for their AHL squad to get things going this season. This will be a good chance for Calgary to get things going again before their series against the Ontario Reign this weekend.

Last game’s lines

Calgary

Matvei Gridin – Rory Kerins – Martin Frk 

Parker Bell – Sam Morton – David Silye

Andrew Basha – Justin Kirkland – Clark Bishop 

Carter Wilkie – Carter King – Lucas Ciona

Turner Ottenbreit – Daniil Miromanov

Nick Cicek – Hunter Brzustewicz 

Jeremie Poirier – Artem Grushnikov

Ivan Prosvetov 

Owen Say 

Abbotsford

Mackenzie MacEachern – Nils Aman – Ben Berard

Joseph LaBate – Ty Mueller – Danila Klimovich

Vilmber Alriksson – Jujhar Khaira – Dino Kambeitz

Josh Bloom – Chase Wouters – Durandeau

Kirill Kudrayavtsev – Victor Mancini

Nikolai Knyzhov – Jimmy Schuldt

Philp Waugh – Sawyer Mynio

Jiri Patera (Inactive on NHL call-up) 

Ty Young

Leaders

Calgary

Martin Frk – 20GP, 10G, 11A

Matvei Gridin – 18GP, 8G, 12A

Rory Kerins – 17GP, 7G, 12A

Abbotsford

Ben Berard – 19GP, 5G, 7A

Joseph LaBate – 19GP, 6G, 4A

Nils Aman – 14GP, 1G, 8A / Sawyer Mynio – 20GP, 2G, 7A

Notes and expectations

Last game, the Wranglers were without Aydar Suniev, William Stromgren and Alex Gallant. Suniev is the player most likely to return for this series as his absence was just illness related. Gallant and Stromgren, however, will be questionable but did have day-to-day statuses as of last week. If any of them return, it’s likely Carter Wilkie comes out of the lineup as he was an extra body from Rapid City to cover for these injuries.

For this break, the Wranglers also sent someone down to get some games in. That was Etienne Morin. Morin has been in and out of the Wranglers’ lineup, playing in six games so far. He got in two games over this stretch of the AHL squad being off and had a two point night on Friday with a goal and an assist against the Idaho Steelheads. There hasn’t been a transaction announced yet to bring him back up, but with four Wranglers games this week, it could be coming soon. 

The Wranglers had a couple of days in Calgary to break up their trip and did practice on home ice. During that time, head coach Brett Sutter shared some insightful evaluations of Matvei Gridin, Aydar Suniev, Andrew Basha, Etienne Morin, Carter King and Martin Frk. You can find those in Ryan Pike’s column, which was published earlier this week.

Sutter did mention in this media availability that he felt the team ran out of steam a bit last week. They had a two game run of wins in Coachella Valley and San Diego but could not get a goal past San Jose in their last game. Even the shots were very low for the majority of the game. With a break and some time at home, this week could be a refreshing reset.

This series gets going on Tuesday in Abbotsford and continues into Wednesday. Both games start at 8:00 p.m. MT. You can stream them for a fee on Flo Hockey and FlamesNation contributors Ryan Pike and I will have updates on X (formerly Twitter).