The San Jose Barracuda (23-27-1-4) scored four unanswered goals to defeat the Ontario Reign (30-21-4-1) Wednesday night by a final score of 6-2 at Toyota Arena. Ontario’s goals both came in the first period from forwards Alan Quine and Tyrell Goulbourne.
The Reign killed all four San Jose power plays in the game, increasing their season-long penalty killing percentage to 84.5% which ranks second-highest in the AHL.
More from head coach Marco Sturm and Goulbourne below.
Just 1:07 in, Quine took the puck away from goaltender Aaron Dell along the end boards and then wrapped it into the net to give Ontario an early 1-0 lead.
San Jose evened the game up at 1-1 moments later when Will Riedell got behind the Ontario defense and beat Cal Petersen with a quick wrist shot at 3:23.
The Barracuda then took their first lead of the game off a faceoff win in Ontario’s end when Jeffrey Viel wristed the puck to the back of the net for his fourth goal against the Reign this season to make it 2-1.
Ontario scored their second goal prior to the end of the first when Andre Lee got the puck to settle down for Goulbourne, who wristed a shot into the top right corner of the net from the left circle that knotted the game back up at 2-2.
But San Jose grabbed the momentum in the second period and never looked back, scoring three times in the middle frame to take a commanding 5-2 lead. Kyle Criscuolo netted an unassisted strike at 6:02 before Luke Johnson put a rebound top shelf at 8:49 and Andrew Agozzino finished a backdoor feed at 14:36.
Ontario began the third period by killing off their third penalty of the night but still couldn’t use that boost to get anything else on the scoreboard past Dell. Criscuolo posted his second goal of the night at 18:14 of the final frame to cap off the scoring for the Barracuda.
The Reign had five power play opportunities in the contest but failed to cash in on any of their man-advantages chances. Ontario finished the game with a 26-22 edge in shots on goal, while Petersen stopped 16 shots in a losing effort. Dell picked up the win for San Jose with 24 stops, improving to 3-0-0 against the Reign this season.
Marco Sturm
On tonight’s loss
Overall it was just not our night. It was very disappointing and very frustrating, the effort we had today. We just made more mistakes than they did. They stuck with it and we didn’t. We actually had a good start. We had an early goal and had some really good chances, and all of a sudden that froze cold and it was game over already. That’s the most disappointing part of it.
On taking more shots to generate offense
We worked on it yesterday and showed a lot of video on how to create a little bit more offense during five-on-five. The guys tried today but we still had a lot of missed shots again from our defense. They tried though, but again, that’s something we’ve got to continue to work on and try to get better to create more during five-on-five because it’s been a struggle for a while.
On the fourth line’s strong effort
Those guys were our best players. The other day they got scored on right away, but these guys bounced back with a big goal and even after that, they spent most of their time in the offensive zone because they outworked them. Hopefully our other lines can see that too. They had energy and a lot of other good things going on, and unfortunately we only had those three guys.
On moving on from tonight
I just know it’s a tough one for me to swallow tonight, I’m not going to lie. What we showed today, especially at home, was not good enough. We have to find a way to look in the mirror and then think about how we’re going to move on to the next opponent. I think we play better against better teams, or the teams ahead of us, but we’ve actually struggled against Calgary. If you look at all of our games, we’ve lost because of us. It’s [because of] our mistakes and our effort, and it keeps continuing like that. We’re not going to win like this, so we have to fix it. It doesn’t matter who we play next.
Tyrell Goulbourne
The Reign are back on the ice Friday night for a matchup with the Calgary Wranglers at Toyota Arena beginning at 7 p.m.
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