The Abbotsford Canucks and Ontario Reign start their Pacific Division semifinals best-of-five series tonight at Toyota Arena.

The Reign and Canucks split the eight games in the season series, winning four games each, and will square off at least another three games to decide who moves on to the Pacific Division finals series.

Tale of the tape

Regular season:

Goals for:

ONT: 231 (10th)

ABB: 234 (7th)

Goals against: 

ONT: 198 (6th)

ABB: 210 (13th)

Power play: 

ONT: 21.8% (2nd)

ABB: 17.6% (23rd)

Penalty kill: 

ONT: 80.2 (23rd)

ABB: 85.0% (3rd)

Postseason

Goals for:

ONT: 8 (4th)

ABB: 10 (1st)

Goals against: 

ONT: 2 (1st)

ABB: 8 (13th)

Power play: 

ONT: 16.7% (11th)

ABB: 12.5% (13th)

Penalty kill:

ONT: 77.8% (12th)

ABB: 81.8% (9th)

Season leading scorers

ONT:

TJ Tynan: 9 goals, 57 assists, 66 points

ABB:

Linus Karlsson: 23 goals, 37 assists, 60 points

Schedule

Game 1: Wednesday, May 1st, @ Ontario, 7 PM PST

Game 2: Sunday, May 5th, @ Ontario, 3 PM PST

Game 3: Wednesday, May 8th, @ Abbotsford, 7 PM PST

*Game 4: Friday, May 10th, @ Abbotsford, 7 PM PST (if necessary)

*Game 5: Sunday, May 12th, @ Abbotsford, 4 PM PST (if necessary)

Starting at home

Due to the teams not being close to each other traveling-wise, this will be a 2-3 series instead of a 2-2-1 series that the Hershey Bears and Lehigh Valley Phantoms are in. In 2022, the Reign faced the Colorado Eagles in the Pacific Division semifinals as the higher seed and opted to have the first two games played in Colorado. The Reign lost both games and were eliminated in game three. They have gone with the opposite this year by starting the first two games at home with the last three in Abbotsford.

Interesting decision.

The Reign have played better at home, but they must feel confident they can win this series on the road. They were third in the AHL in road wins (23), while the Canucks were tied with four other teams in home wins (20), which was tenth in the league. Perhaps the Reign are confident given their road success all year? However, they lost three of the four games in the season series played in Abbotsford. We shall see.

Top players vs top players

Both teams like to roll all four lines and six defensemen. Abbotsford comes at you in waves because they are a fast and skilled team. Looking at the season stats, both teams won four games apiece with the Canucks outscoring the Reign 24-20. It was a very close series as six games were decided by two goals or less. The only two losses that didn’t fall in that category were two Canucks wins on home ice in back-to-back games that saw Reign get outscored 11-2.

Abbotsford’s top three scorers Linus Karlsson, Arshdeep Bains, and Sheldon Dries, combined for 25 points in the eight-game season series. Dries has always found the scoresheet in his career against the Reign by scoring 27 points in 31 regular season games. Looking at Ontario’s top scorers TJ Tynan, Charles Hudon, Akil Thomas, Brandt Clarke, and Samuel Fagemo, they combined for 13 points in the eight games. Now, not every player from both sides I listed played in all eight meetings, but if the Reign want to win this series, their best players will need to be better than the Canucks’ best players.

Goaltending matchup

Erik Portillo is expected to start this series for the Reign. In six games against the Canucks in the regular season, he posted a .906 save percentage that got skewed by two ugly losses in December (mentioned earlier) where the Reign were the second-best team in both games. In the two-game sweep against Bakersfield, Portillo posted a .964 save percentage and 2.00 goals-against average.

The Reign saw Arturs Silovs and Nikita Tolopilo in the regular season and won’t see either one start the series as both have been recalled to the Vancouver Canucks due to injuries to Thatcher Demko and Casey DeSmith. Instead, Ontario will face Zach Sawchenko, who posted a .925 save percentage and 2,50 goals-against average in Abbotsford’s three-game series victory over the Colorado Eagles.

The Reign haven’t faced Sawchenko since December of 2021. This is the matchup worth watching as there isn’t much familiarity from the Reign’s standpoint on Sawchenko, while the Canucks have seen plenty of Portillo.

Special teams matchup

You didn’t think I wasn’t going to mention the special teams did you? Both teams scored five power-play goals against the other. Overall, the Reign’s power play was ranked in the top five on the season but bottom ten on the penalty kill. Abbotsford was the opposite, as they ranked in the top five on the penalty kill but bottom ten on the power play.

Lineup changes?

Marco Sturm went for a heavier lineup in the bottom six in the series Bakersfield Condors. With the Canucks having more skill and speed in their lineup, does Sturm roll with the same 12 forwards, or do we see a change in that part of the lineup? I think there’s a chance we see one, if not both, of Martin Chromiak and Francesco Pinelli in this series.

The question is, who will Sturm take out? Pinelli is one of Ontario’s creative forwards who skates well from blue line to blue line horizontally, east-to-west, and is arguably the second-best on the team when it comes to zone entry. Having a player like that in the lineup against a much more skilled and faster team than Bakersfield can bode well for the Reign. That is the luxury of having a deep roster.

Prediction

These teams are even and it’ll probably go the distance. I think the Reign’s top players will show up in this series while getting contributions from their depth players like they have all season.

Pick: Reign in five

Featured image credit: Mike Zitek/Ontario Reign

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