Ontario Reign at Abbotsford: Preview, Reign Drops, Broadcast Info

After an unexpected week off, the Ontario Reign travel north for two games against the Abbotsford Canucks on Tuesday and Wednesday.

With the weekend’s home games postponed, the Ontario Reign had a couple of extra days of practice time before traveling for their back-to-back games in Abbotsford. Ontario leads the Pacific Division (by winning percentage) with an 11-2-0-1 record, while the Canucks are coming off of two straight losses in Tucson, seeing their record fall to 4-6-2-1.

The two teams have met four times already this season, with the Reign winning three of them. The lone Abbotsford win came in a shootout. Three of the four meetings have gone to overtime.

Top Performers

Martin Frk leads the team in goals (9), assists (11), and points (20).

With the back-to-back, I’d expect to see both Matt Villalta and Garrett Sparks get action. Villalta rebounded from his worst start of the year with a win against the Stockton Heat on Monday night. On the season, he is 7-1 with a 2.80 goals-against average and a .900 save percentage. Sparks took the loss in his last start on Sunday against the Heat. Overall, the veteran netminder is  4-1 with a 2.90 goals-against average and a .908 save percentage.

For Abbotsford, Sheldon Dries leads the team in goals (7) and points (14). Phil Di Giuseppe leads the team in assists, with eight.

In goal, Michael DiPietro has played in seven games, going 2-3-2 with a 2.81 goals-against average and a .912 save percentage. Arturs Silovs is 2-3 with a 2.77 goals-against average and a .901 save percentage in his five games. They’ve each played in two games against the Reign, with Silovs picking up the lone victory.

Special Teams

The Reign still has the division’s best power-play at 16-for-61 (26.2%). Frk’s 8 points with the man-advantage are tops on the team, while Jaret Anderson-Dolan leads the team — and is tied for the league lead — with four power-play goals.

On the penalty kill, the Reign have killed 43-of-59 (72.9%). They have one short-handed goal on the season.

Abbotsford’s power-play is 9-for-53 (17%). Dries leads the Canucks in goals (2), assists (2), and points (4) with the man advantage.

On the penalty kill, the Condors have killed 53-of-64 (82.8%).

Shot Attempts

In the four games against the Canucks, Ontario has been able to control the majority of play:

Reign Drops

• Helge Grans has points in back-to-back games, including a power-play goal in their first of two games against Stockton two weekends ago. With Sean Durzi up with the Kings, I’d expect Grans to continue to see time on the second power-play unit.
• I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Durzi’s debut in Los Angeles. While unfortunately, it came in a loss, I couldn’t be more excited about his potential contributions to the Kings, and he showed it in his debut, picking up a goal and an assist – both on the power play. He followed that up with another power-play assist on Saturday against the Ottawa Senators. As valuable as he has been for Ontario, here’s hoping he spends the rest of this season in LA.
• After going seven straight games without a goal, Tyler Madden picked up two in the Reign’s most recent game against Stockton. He’s a player I’ve been high on earlier this season. Hopefully, this is a start of a bit of a hot streak.
• Conversely, Alex Turcotte has now gone without a point in three straight.
• Speaking of streaks, we’ll end with a positive, and that is Vladimir Tkachev riding a seven-game (in other words, every game he’s played in the AHL) point streak with a goal and ten assists.

Puck Drop and Broadcast Info

• Tuesday, November 30 at 7:00 p.m. P.T.
• TV: AHLTV

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