REIGN FINAL – Reign 4, Silver Knights 3 – Ward, Sturm

The Ontario Reign (18-8-0-1) capped off their best month of 2024 on the final day of the year with a 4-3 win over the Henderson Silver Knights (8-22-0-0) at Lee’s Family Forum Tuesday night to move into sole possession of second place in the AHL’s Pacific Division with 37 points.

Taylor Ward led the way offensively with a goal and an assist, while Jack Studnicka, Glenn Gawdin and Francesco Pinelli also found the back of the net and Erik Portillo stopped a season-high 40 shots in the victory.

BOX SCORE

Ontario completed December with a 8-1-0-1 record from their 10 contests in the month, a points percentage of 0.850. All eight victories came in come-from-behind fashion, including Tuesday’s which saw the Reign erase a 2-1 deficit during the middle period.

The scoring started at 3:52 of the first when Martin Chromiak was stopped on a breakaway chance by Henderson goaltender Carl Lindbom, but Ward pounced on the loose rebound and tapped it into an open net for his third goal of the year to make it 1-0 in favor of Ontario.

Later in the frame, the Reign killed a 4-minute double-minor penalty to Jeff Malott which included multiple highlight-reel stops by Portillo, who finished the frame with 11 stops.

Ontario carried their lead into the second, but it only lasted momentarily as the Silver Knights tied the game at 1-1 with a power play goal by Brandan Brisson at 3:52.

1:01 later, Matyas Sapovaliv put Henderson in front with a shot through traffic that got past Portillo at 4:53 of the middle frame.

But Studnicka responded for Ontario at 6:31, scoring his fifth of the year on a rush into the Henderson end. A wrist shot past the glove of Lindbom with assists from Tyler Madden and Jack Millar had the game tied up at 2-2.

In the closing seconds of the second, Gawdin, who was standing in the faceoff circle for a draw to the side of Henderson’s net, shot the puck immediately after it came out of the official’s hand. His blast went to the net and beat Lindbom to give the Reign a 3-2 advantage with just 12 seconds remaining on the clock.

Ontario carried that one-goal lead into the final minutes of the third, when Pinelli added insurance with an empty-net goal at 18:52. Pinelli’s fourth goal in his past three outings came with a single helper from Ward and made it 4-2.

The Silver Knights got one closer on a goal by Jake Bischoff with 2.7 seconds left in the contest, but it was too little too late for Henderson.

Brisson’s second period goal was the lone man-advantage tally of the contest, with the Silver Knights going 1-for-5 on the power play while Ontario ended at 0-for-1. Henderson had a 43-40 edge in shots on goal during the game, with Lindbom making 36 saves in a losing effort.

Postgame reactions from Ward and head coach Marco Sturm are below –

Taylor Ward
On the team coming from behind again to win another game
Obviously we don’t want to ever be down but we’ve got the confidence in the room right now that we know it’s a 60-minute game and we just keep pushing right until the end. Up or down or tied or whatever, we just try to stick to our game plan and skate, move our feet and make good plays and that’s what happened tonight.

On his goal after Chromiak’s breakaway
I mean he’s so fast, I’m just trying to catch up to him really. I got pretty lucky that it was just sitting there for an empty net but he made a great read in the d-zone and took off and most of the time I’m just trying to keep up with him.

On what has gone well during this recent stretch of eight wins in nine games
I think we’re just getting real comfortable with our identity and understanding our individual roles within the teams and when we all buy in to that system and identity of a unit, good things happen. We’re just trying to keep it rolling and stick to our game plan and it’s been working so there’s no reason to change it.

On having the best +/- rating on the team during 2024
That’s pretty cool, I didn’t know that but I mean I’d like to take credit but I’m playing with great players and the coaches have really helped me over the last few years on tightening up my defensive play and without the guys I’m playing with and the coaching staff then I’d probably be at the other end of that to be honest but that’s cool, that feels good.

Marco Sturm
On the way his team played to finish off the year with a win
I thought we had a really good start, the first 10 minutes was great until we had that four-minute PK there and that kind of screwed us a little bit for that period and even the start of the second so we were trying to find that same game that we had in the first 10 minutes and lucky enough to come out with a win today.

On the play of Erik Portillo in the win
I mentioned it after the game, he made huge saves. Didn’t matter which period it was he came up big all the time. We were swimming a few times on the PK especially. They have a talented team and we knew that and we didn’t want to give them any special teams time today and unfortunately we gave them way too many but Ports was great.

On the way the last month has gone with eight wins in 10 games
We’re only good when we play as a team. Our lines are very balanced I would say. There were nights that our first line, second line came up big, even our fourth line some nights. So that makes us really good. We have a really good goalie combo I would say with Copley and Ports and they’ve started to heat up too. I think it’s just the overall team play. Everyone knows system-wise, it just took us a little bit of time but I think now we’ve all figured it out.

On Gawdin’s goal and him shooting it on the faceoff
I think he tricked all of us. That was a great play. I didn’t see it coming. He set it up really nice too with Sammy behind him and he tricked everyone. It was a huge goal for us. He set us up for the third period.

Ontario will begin 2025 at home this weekend with a Friday night SoCal Series matchup against the San Diego Gulls inside Toyota Arena at 5 p.m.