REIGN FINAL – Reign 1, Barracuda 4 – Sturm

A pair of third period power play goals by Pavol Regenda pushed the San Jose Barracuda (35-25-5-4) past the Ontario Reign (40-24-3-1) by a final score of 4-1 in the opener of a two-game weekend set at Tech CU Arena on Friday night.

Caleb Jones scored the lone goal for Ontario in the opening minute of the contest, while goaltender Pheonix Copley kept his team in the game with 25 saves in a losing effort.

BOX SCORE

Ontario jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead in the opening minute for the second consecutive matchup in San Jose when Jones poked the puck past goaltender Gabriel Carriere along the post 36 seconds into the action. Assists on the first strike of the contest went to Jack Studnicka and Andre Lee.

The Reign held on to their advantage for the remainder of the period and entered the first intermission with a 14-7 edge in shots on net after two power play opportunities that featured multiple high-quality looks at the Barracuda goal.

But things turned in the other direction in the second and San Jose evened the score up at 3:32 of the middle period when Scott Sabourin snuck a low shot past Copley to tie the game.

Then in the third, the Barracuda took control on special teams and didn’t let up. Pavol Regenda put San Jose in front for the first time with a power play goal at 4:50 of the final frame and Danil Gushchin extended the advantage to 3-1 at 11:07 during 4-on-4 play.

Regenda added his second power play tally at 17:14 to put the game out of reach for Ontario and seal the victory for the home side.

The Reign out-shot the Barracuda 32-29 overall in the game, which also featured 31 saves from Carriere to earn the win. San Jose finished 2-for-5 on the power play during the contest while holding Ontario to an 0-for-4 mark on the man-advantage.

Postgame reactions from head coach Marco Sturm are below –

Marco Sturm
On the special teams being the difference in the game
I thought the five-on-five was actually not too bad, but special teams, we didn’t score, and they scored a few on us, and even on the four-on-four. So that was the difference of the game.

On coming up short during the first period power plays
We had some good looks, we had some good chances, but end of the day if you don’t score it’s going to bite you, and the bottom line is they scored two on their power play and we didn’t have one.

On the play of Pheonix Copley
The first one was just an unlucky goal, unfortunately, but again, I think he was solid tonight. I think we just made, especially more in the third period or second half of the game, too many mistakes from the guys in front of him but he was hanging in there and he tried everything he could to get us a win.

On his team’s frustration level in the third period
I think it’s not a good sign if guys are getting frustrated in the third. That shows to me that we’re just not there yet. That’s usually how I see it. If we would have stayed calm and just let them play five-on-five, I think we would have gotten a few points out of it, but we didn’t. We made some mistakes, we took some bad penalties and all of a sudden we started to scramble. And we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t at all. We played a really good first period exactly the way we wanted. And unfortunately, we got away from it.

On his thoughts leading into tomorrow’s rematch
We’re going to make a bunch of changes tomorrow. Looking forward to the playoffs, I thought this was a playoff atmosphere and unfortunately, we failed in a lot of areas. I think tomorrow it’s a new day, it’s a game to bounce back. A lot of guys have to realize that and have to be better and have to be effective to be part of this team.

The Reign will play their final road game of the 2024-25 regular season on Saturday against the Barracuda at Tech CU Arena with puck drop scheduled for 6 p.m.