Former Reign goaltender Jack Campbell improved his record to 3-0-0 against his former team this season by stopping all 29 shots the Ontario Reign (31-21-3-4) put on goal Saturday night to lead the Bakersfield Condors (32-21-2-2) to a 4-0 win at Mechanics Bank Arena.
Erik Portillo got the start for the Reign and made 30 saves in a losing effort, including multiple high-level stops during the first five minutes of the second period when the Condors had Ontario pinned in its own zone.
Dylan Holloway got the Condors on the board for the first time at 8:17 of the opening period by deflecting a shot from the right-wing boards through Portillo to make it 1-0 in favor of Bakersfield.
The Reign held a 10-8 edge in shots on goal during the first frame, a period which only had one penalty called to Brad Malone of the Condors for slashing.
Max Wanner, the Bakersfield defender who took the initial shot that Holloway deflected for the team’s first period goal, extended the Condors lead to 2-0 at 4:42 of the second with his fourth goal of the season
Then, while Bakersfield was killing their second penalty of the night to Cam Dineen for tripping, Lane Peterson netted a shorthanded strike at 6:28 to put the Condors ahead by three.
Ontario had a few looks to get back in the game later in the middle period, including a shot that rang off the right post behind Campbell, but they entered the locker room for the second intermission still behind 3-0.
Neither team scored for the first 14 minutes of the third period. That’s when Reign head coach Marco Sturm elected to bring Portillo to the bench in favor of an extra attacker in a desperate attempt to get back in the game with his team still trailing. Ontario was able to hold the puck in the offensive end for two minutes but eventually surrendered an empty-net goal to Philip Kemp at 16:15 which capped off the scoring in the game.
The Reign killed the only minor penalty they were assessed in the contest, a tripping call to Martin Chromiak at 4:21 of the third. But Ontario finished 0-for-4 on the power play and couldn’t use the extra man to its advantage.
Postgame thoughts Sturm as well as forward Akil Thomas are below.
Marco Sturm
On the way the game changed after a competitive first period
Yeah we knew coming in it was going to be a tough night. We had to dig deep and came out strong. Bad goal against but overall I thought it was a good period. Basically we slept through the first 10 minutes in the second period and that was the game, that’s it. We recovered, we had some chances after that, you know, third period we tried but the powerplay was not clicking either today and [Campbell] was good in net. It was a tough one but it was a good week for us I thought overall. Now we have to regroup and get some rest and go back at it.
On the power play not having its best night
The power play’s been a little bit off for a few games now. And again, they’re a big part of our success so if the power play is not going it’s going to be hard for us and unfortunately, we had no answers today.
On being able to stay out of the penalty box and not give them PP chances
Yeah, they beat us pretty bad last time when we played against them with four power play goals against. That was one of the things we did a good job with today and you know what, overall we did play a solid game it’s just the last punch was just not there.
Akil Thomas
The Reign resume their schedule on Wednesday night in Ontario when they take on the Tucson Roadrunners at Toyota Arena beginning at 7 p.m.
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