Ontario Reign @ San Antonio Rampage (AT&T CEnter) / Ontario Reign @ Texas Stars (Cedar Park Center)
Days: Friday (AT&T Center)/Saturday (Cedar Park Center)
Time: 5:30 p.m. Pacific (Friday), 5:00 p.m. Pacific (Saturday)
Listen: Mixlr
Watch: AHL Live
Ontario Reign Projected Lines
39 Auger – 9 Kempe – 16 Backman
27 Mersch – 26 Dowd – 12 Brodzinski
18 Samuels-Thomas – 21 Crescenzi – 7 Zykov
28 Lowry – 24 Horvat – 25 Sabourin
20 MacDermid – 5 Loverde
4 Gravel – 33 Raine
55 Schultz – 23 Ebert
31 Budaj
32 Emery
Some game notes, information courtesy of Lindsay Czarnecki:
- Paul Bissonnette is sidelined with another injury, this one unrelated to the groin injury that caused him to miss a couple of weeks earlier this season.
- Jonny Brodzinski is terribly snakebitten, so Coach Stothers is moving him up with Nic Dowd and Michael Mersch to see if that helps get him going.
- Stothers says it’s nothing against Valentin Zykov, but he was looking for a spark up in Bako and found one with the line of Mersch-Dowd-Brodzinski. As Sheng noted in his #fancystat recap, that line was +9 in corsi when they were put together, so it’s worth an extended look.
- Joel Lowry had an unfortunate pro debut as his line gave up a couple of first period goals, but overall it was a (mostly) positive experience.
San Antonio Rampage Projected Lines
Agozzino-Cliche-Rantanen
Rendulic-Smith-Petryk
Bordeleau-Hishon-Bourke
Schumacher-Henley-Cheek
Bigras-Clark
Siemens-Noreau
Labrie-Zadorov
Pickard
- The last time the Reign and Rampage played was a back-to-back set in Ontario, in which the latter was (mostly) opportunistic in taking 4 points instead of 2 as both games went to OT.
- It was a goaltending duel between Peter Budaj and Calvin Pickard on the second day, leading to a heartbreaking 2-1 defeat in OT as the young Avalanche netminder was absolutely fantastic in stealing the extra point for his team.
- Clark suffered an injury on Tuesday and is a “game-time decision” per Dan Weiss, the Rampage PBP guy./
Texas Stars Projected Lines
Lines courtesy of 100 Degree Hockey.
Shore-Morin-Ranford
McKenzie-Faksa-Rallo
Hulak-Smith-Troock
Dickinson-Stransky-Dowling?
Lindell-Johns
Nemeth-Blacker
Mangene-Honka
Bystrom?
Campbell
- The Stars are in a bit of a rut and may shake things up, however, things aren’t really expected to change too much. These were the lines from the last game.
- Justin Dowling was injured on Tuesday but will play this weekend. F Dowling probably comes in, and D Mangene is likely on the outside.
- Jack Campbell may start on Friday, and if he does, the Reign may see John Muse, who’s having a slightly better season than Campbell./