The Grand Rapids Griffins (16-17-5-2) avenged their loss Friday night with a 5-2 defeat of the Ontario Reign (24-8-3-2) Saturday evening at Van Andel Arena to force a split in the teams’ weekend series. The Reign got goals from forwards Gabriel Vilardi, Brett Sutter and Jaret Anderson-Dolan in a losing effort.
Goaltender Jacob Ingham got the start for Ontario and turned aside 32 shots in the contest, including 20 during the first period. Forward Austin Wagner extended his point streak to three games with a shorthanded assist on Sutter’s goal late in the first.
More from Reign Assistant Coach Chris Hajt and defenseman Cameron Gaunce below.
Vilardi set off a run of scoring at 12:58 of the first when he got the Reign in front 1-0 with the opening goal of the evening, his 11th of the season, from Gaunce and forward Samuel Fagemo.
The Griffins responded with three goals in a span of just 1:37 to take a 3-1 lead. Jonatan Berggren netted a power play marker at 14:06 before Luke Witkowski put Grand Rapids in front at 14:56 and Jared McIsaac extended the advantage at 15:43.
Sutter scored shorthanded to make it a one-goal game again before the end of the first frame at 17:41, one-timing a pass by Wagner by goaltender Victor Brattstrom.
But the Griffins surged ahead in the second period with two shorthanded goals of their own to enter the third with a 5-2 advantage. Joe Veleno had the first during an Ontario power play at 6:55, while Tyler Spezia added on at 14:39.
The Reign were unable to get any closer for the majority of the third period, despite earning multiple man-advantage opportunities. In the final minute of the contest, Anderson-Dolan found the back of the net with his 16th goal of the season from Vilardi and forward Alex Turcotte.
Brattstrom picked up the win for the Griffins with 28 saves, while his team outshot the Reign 37-31 overall on the night. Grand Rapids ended at 1-for-4 on the power play and held Ontario to an 0-for-7 mark on the man-advantage.
Chris Hajt
On what went wrong with tonight’s game
We had a good game last night. Grand Rapids, give them a lot of credit. They came out with purpose and a focus on competing. They put the body on us all night and over time we just didn’t make the right decisions and they were able to capitalize on opportunities and play a really good game. For us, it wasn’t our night, we didn’t play our game, and we didn’t play well enough to deserve to win. Now we have the break. We’ll recharge out batteries, learn from it and move forward.
On what the Reign did at the end of the game with the goaltender pulled
You’ve got to have a little desperation in your game. There’s no goalie in there so you have to make sure that you’re taking care of the puck and fighting for those looks pucks, which is something we didn’t have a lot of during the game, so it was good that the players still had the belief that we could come back. Being in that situation we haven’t been in a lot, so hopefully we don’t have that too much, but it is what it is. We got a goal there and we had some opportunities, and we’ll learn from it.
On his team’s special teams in tonight’s game
They made some adjustments to their penalty kill and did a good job of it. We just weren’t as sharp as we wanted to be and ultimately we weren’t able to get it done. They had a couple of shorties which is something you never want to give up, and they were able to get two of them. So again, we’ll learn from it. We have a little bit of a break here to refresh and recharge so we can put this one behind us and move forward.
Cameron Gaunce
On what the message was in the locker room after the game
I think the message was we need to park this game, leave it. There was instances in the game that were good, but all in all this is one that we forget about. If I was a football coach, I’d use the analogy that all those football guys use, bury the football. Just get rid of it. We’ve been playing a lot of good hockey and today we just had too many shifts where we were off so let it go and move on.
On what the team has done to put games behind them in the past
I think this break is going to be excellent for us. It couldn’t come at a better time after a game like that. Get it out of our system, have a couple days to just focus on other things. For some of us, focus on our family. I’m thrilled to get back to my wife and my parents, it’s going to be great. For me for instance, I didn’t have the best first period so these couple days will let me get away, rejuvenate a bit and then refocus and come back next week.
On why this team can potentially go on a long run this season
When you look at a lot of the ingredients that make up a winning team, we’ve got it. We’ve got the talent first and foremost, and that’s kind of the hardest thing. We’re deep, so come playoff time if a team wants to run out a couple shut down lines if you call them, we’ve got four lines that can play and then we’ve got a couple extra forwards that can play. We’ve got 7-8 defense deep, a couple of very good goaltenders, and we’ve got a good mix of youthfulness and experience because experience will be huge throughout the year but you also need that youthful exuberance at certain times of the year. We’re going to come up on some dog days in February and March and some of that youthful exuberance is going to be necessary on some days. So we’ve got those things, we’ve got a good system in place with the coaching staff, I think Chris Hajt, Craig Johnson and Brad Schuler have done an excellent job with us. I think we’ve been put in opportunities to succeed and it’s up to us and with the group we have in there I think that we’re willing to take on that challenge.
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