12/20 REIGN FINAL – Reign 2, Canucks 5 – Sturm

The Ontario Reign (15-8-2-1) battled back to erase a pair of deficits in the second period but came up short in the third on Wednesday night, falling on the road to the Abbotsford Canucks (15-8-2-0) by a final score of 5-2 at the Abbotsford Centre.

Forward Martin Chromiak factored in on both Reign goals, scoring the first and assisting on the second, a strike by Samuel Fagemo for his team-leading 12th goal of the season. Erik Portillo started his second straight game for Ontario, turning out 38 Abbotsford shots in a losing effort.

BOX SCORE

Although neither team was able to find the back of the net on any of their nine shots in the opening period, the action headed up in the middle frame.

Abbotsford took the initial lead on a strike by Max Sasson at 6:45 of the second that took a deflection off Reign defender Steven Santini before trickling past Portillo to make it 1-0.

The Reign evened the score at 1-1 on the power play less than four minutes later at 10:37 when Chromiak lit the lamp for the seventh time this season. Tyler Madden gained possession for Ontario by winning an offensive zone faceoff to Wyatte Wylie, who found Chromiak open for a one-timer that he used to beat Canucks’ netminder Nikita Tolopilo.

Moments later it was Abbotsford that took the lead right back at 12:47 when Sasson recorded his second of the night on the power play to put his team on top, 2-1.

Fagemo rallied the Reign once again, however, scoring seconds after Ontario was unable to convert a 5-on-3 power play opportunity by picking up his own rebound and shooting it up high into the net for his team-leading 12th goal of the year. Assists on the tally, which came at 16:34 of the second, went to Chromiak and Brandt Clarke.

The goal extended Fagemo’s point streak to seven games and gave him points in 14 of his 15 AHL appearances this season.

But after almost 14 scoreless minutes to begin the final period, the Canucks pushed through and took over the game in its late stages. First, Jett Woo scored the game-winning goal at 13:58 of the third on a rebound off a broken play in Ontario’s zone and then Vasily Podkolzin added an empty-net strike with Portillo at the bench at 18:40 before Arshdeep Bains tacked on a late power play goal in the final minute with just 23 seconds left on the clock.

Tolopilo made 22 saves for the Canucks to earn the victory and Abbotsford finished 2-for-7 on the power play while the Reign ended at 1-for-5.

Postgame thoughts from head coach Marco Sturm are below.

Marco Sturm
On the way the team played overall in the game
Overall it was just not a good game from us. We had way too many passengers and being on the road and playing against a good team, that’s just not going to do it. Unfortunately, we only had a few guys going and that’s it and definitely deserved the loss today.

On losing Tyler Inamoto early to injury and playing down a defender
We are really hurting on D with a lot of injuries and obviously, it doesn’t help when a guy is out early, so we got stuck with five D and also our D took a lot of penalties as well so we were down to four a lot and it was a lot for them. But those are injuries you can’t control and we’ve done it before but today, overall it was just not good enough.

On the play of Portillo in the game
He was one of the guys who brought his “A” game and he kept us in it for a very long time. He gave us a chance to get at least a point and I thought he was excellent.

On the play of his group on special teams
Overall, special teams, again, 5-on-5 and also special teams we were just not ready. PK, a few goals against, we were in the box way too many times, power play, we didn’t execute, not like we wanted to be. That just showed our performance today and like I always say in the past, we need good special teams to have success and we didn’t have that on top of it tonight.

The Reign play their final game before they hit the league’s holiday break on Thursday to conclude this week’s series against the Canucks at 7 p.m. at the Abbotsford Centre.