ONTARIO, CA. -- Erik Portillo earns his first loss of the season as the Ontario Reign blow a two-goal lead and lose 5-4 to the Tucson Roadrunners Friday night at Toyota Arena.
Portillo saved 25 of 30 shots and shutout Tucson for the first two periods, but the final period went up in flames for Ontario.
Reign coach Andrew Lord called the third period “atrocious” in postgame interviews.
“We imploded, more or less,” Lord said. “(It’s) extremely frustrating to throw a game away like that … Just no game management at all. We could say it’s a good one to learn early in the year, but it was our veteran guys unfortunately and they need to be better.”
Coming into the game, the Reign were 1-2-0 at home (now 1-3-0) and had struggled in the opening period, being outscored 11-3 this season.
And yet for the first 40 minutes, a lack of energy on the ice wasn’t an issue for Ontario.
In fact, tonight the Reign shined through some of their more recent struggles - in the first two periods at least.
“We’re bought in, played to our identity,” Lord said. “We defended the rush pretty good, we defended in the (defensive) zone quite well, we managed the puck. As a result, we generated a lot, you have to give their goalie credit. He was very good, especially in the first.”
This season, Ontario had only scored six power-play goals out of its 37 opportunities.
But Aatu Jämsen would improve that statistic tonight as he scored a power-play goal after 17:07 passed in the opening period, with help from Kenny Connors and Cole Guttman.
Connors and Kirill Kirsanov would assist Jack Millar to his first goal of the season, giving the Reign a 2-0 lead heading into the final period.
But clearly, a two-goal lead wasn’t much insurance when there is still 20 minutes left to play.
And the Roadrunners hadn’t given up.
“They (Tucson) had a push (in the third period),” Lord said. “They’re an unbelievable team this year. They’ve traditionally been extremely hardworking and now they have a lot of skill to go with it, so it’s a dangerous combination when you have that.”
Austin Poganski and Cameron Hebig found the back of the net for Tucson within two minutes of one another, quickly tying the game 2-2.
The vivacious Ontario home crowd had suddenly quieted down, and rightfully so.
Especially when the Roadrunners now had momentum that they lacked for the previous two periods.
So back and forth the teams went.
Kaleb Lawrence scored his first goal of the season, handing the lead back to Ontario with half of the period left.
That lead would be short-lived as Brandon Tanev scored a short-handed goal, tying the game once again.
Tucson would earn its first lead of the night with 6:09 remaining in the game as Hebig found the back of the net for the second time tonight, earning three points with two goals and an assist.
The Reign were down by one and had a power play in the last two minutes of the game.
One might think this would help Ontario, but no.
Instead Tomas Lavoie scored an unassisted short-handed goal, giving Tucson a two-goal lead.
Koehn Ziemmer would score a power-play goal with 18 seconds remaining in the game, but it was too little, too late.
Roadrunners goalie Jaxson Stauber saved 33 of 37 shots and Tucson went 0-for-3 on the power play; they’d rather just score two short-handed goals instead.
Martin Chromiak - who scored the game-winning goal at the last home game and was recently named AHL Player of the Week - was brought up by the Los Angeles Kings Thursday.
The Reign (5-5-0-0; 10 points) will look to turn things around as they continue this weekend series and face the Roadrunners (6-2-2-0; 14 points) Saturday at 3 p.m.