ONTARIO, Calif., -- Despite winning all three games last week, the Ontario Reign fell 4-2 against the Colorado Eagles Wednesday night at Toyota Arena.
“It was a tough night for sure,” coach Marco Sturm said in postgame interviews. “If you’re not engaged in a game you can’t win a hockey game. I think everyone was involved today and there was no life, no energy, the (competition) level was not there.”
Jack Studnicka initiated the Reign’s offense just 26 seconds into the opening period, finding the back of the net for the third time in the last five games. Studnicka’s 11th goal of the season came with help from Taylor Ward, who was credited with his 9th assist this season.
Colorado’s Jacob MacDonald evened the score with a goal of his own to finish off period one.
The second period consisted of a dominant Eagles team, shutting out the Reign completely.
“I just don’t think that we were 100 percent there.” Taylor Ward said. “That first 30 seconds was good but after that I thought that they carried the play, especially in the second and third, we weren’t good enough. So we’ll dissect that and try to figure out what our key issues were and move on.”
Ontario spent a majority of period two softly defending their net, while hardly having opportunities to score themselves as they gave up three goals in eight minutes.
Coach Sturm said the disconnect began 15 minutes into the first period as turnovers and not sticking to their game resulted in the team beating themselves.
Jake Wise and Calle Rosen each added a goal for the Eagles before Nikita Prishchepov scored a short-handed goal with 30 seconds remaining in the second period.
Martin Chromiak scored a power-play goal with 17 seconds left in the third, but it wasn’t enough as the time ran out - and they were still behind by two goals.
Ontario went 1-for-2 on the power play but killed the two penalties they committed.
Ontario falls back into third place in the AHL Pacific Division with a 24-14-1-1 record and 50 points.
The Reign looks onward to Friday as they travel to Tucson Convention Center Arena to face the Tucson Roadrunners at 6 p.m.