ONTARIO, Calif. — The Ontario Reign win back-to-back games with a 6-3 hard fought victory over the Bakersfield Condors on Saturday night at Toyota Arena.<\/p>\n
After shutting out Coachella Valley 7-0 on Wednesday, the Reign have scored 13 goals in their last two games.<\/p>\n
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After a long stretch of being away for the past 17 days, going 3-3 in that time, competing on home ice for the first time in over two weeks meant that Ontario would hopefully put on a good show, which they did.<\/p>\n
When asked about the Reign\u2019s offense the past two games, Kenny Connors said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re defending better, (it) starts in our own zone. We\u2019re getting the puck out cleaner and it\u2019s leading to better odd-man rushes or cleaner rushes and we\u2019re really trying to get to the middle more in the (offensive) zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Reign fought – literally and figuratively – for this win, as it was a vicious battle with Ontario only having five games remaining in the regular season. <\/p>\n
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Since clinching a spot in the AHL Calder Cup Playoffs on March 27 after beating the Tucson Roadrunners 3-2, the Reign have gone 3-1.<\/p>\n
The Reign are currently in first place in the AHL Pacific Division at 43-19-3-2 and 91 points. The Colorado Eagles stand only one point back in second place with a 40-17-5-5 record.<\/p>\n
Roby J\u00e4rventie opened the scoring early for Bakersfield (34-22-9-1) with a power-play goal 1:47 into the first period.<\/p>\n
The players had been chirpy and played rough from start to finish, but a fight between Jacob Doty and Sam Poulin halfway through the opening period would soon increase the momentum of the game.<\/p>\n
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The gloves came off and Doty and Poulin threw punches back and forth as blood splattered onto the ice.<\/p>\n
Poulin\u2019s nose would soon be taped up and the game would end with 16 total penalties.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Doty\u2019s been) doing that for us all year long,\u201d Connors said. \u201cAnd we didn\u2019t really come out the way we wanted to or the way we should and (Doty) stepped up. That was an unbelievable fight, so there\u2019s no way that we weren\u2019t gonna be ready to go after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Doty and Poulin received five-minute fighting penalties and just 21 seconds later, Glenn Gawdin tied the game with help from Joe Hicketts and Cole Guttman.<\/p>\n
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Poulin would score within the last minute of the first to hand Bakersfield the 2-1 lead going into the second period.<\/p>\n
Andre Lee scored a power-play goal for his 26th goal of the season, with assists from Francesco Pinelli and Connors.<\/p>\n
James Hamblin would score the Condors\u2019 last goal of the night with 32 minutes remaining in the game.<\/p>\n
Jack Highes\u2019 short-handed goal, two goals from Nikita Alexandrov and Aatu J\u00e4msen\u2019s score would give the Reign a 6-3 victory.<\/p>\n
Ontario coach Andrew Lord said this game had a playoff feel with the animosity and rivalry between the teams.<\/p>\n
Erik Portillo finished with 20 saves while Ontario ended the night with 30 shots on goal, going 1-for-7 on the power play.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think the goaltending (has) been so solid and consistent for most of the year,\u201d Lord said. \u201cIt\u2019s just the norm now, where a big save – maybe you don\u2019t even realize it\u2019s that big of a save. But (Portillo) was excellent, a couple of the breakaways in particular. Our goaltending – we couldn\u2019t be more fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ontario will host Colorado at Toyota Arena on Tuesday at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ONTARIO, Calif. — The Ontario Reign win back-to-back games with a 6-3 hard fought victory over the Bakersfield…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[53794,151,3855,153,152,53795,551,53796,112334,21156,112333,26191,53797,26192,51497,112331,112332],"class_list":{"0":"post-253217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-andre-lee","9":"tag-bakersfield","10":"tag-bakersfield-condors","11":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","12":"tag-bakersfield-news","13":"tag-cole-guttman","14":"tag-colorado","15":"tag-glenn-gawdin","16":"tag-jack-highes","17":"tag-james-hamblin","18":"tag-joe-hicketts","19":"tag-kenny-connors","20":"tag-nikita-alexandrov","21":"tag-ontario-reign","22":"tag-sam-poulin","23":"tag-the-reign","24":"tag-toyota-arena"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}