Reign finish regular season with loss against Canucks

(Ontario Reign)

ONTARIO, CA. -- In the final game of the regular season the Ontario Reign were shut out 2-0 by the Abbotsford Canucks Saturday night at Toyota Arena.

With playoffs around the corner, a few key players were not on the ice tonight. And it made more of a difference than perhaps otherwise expected.

Defensemen Angus Booth and Kirill Kirsanov, along with forward Kenny Connors were resting tonight, and the Reign looked like a completely different team without them.

Abbotsford is in ninth place in the AHL Pacific Division at 27-37-4-3 and 61 points, hence why the Pacific Division champions getting shut out by a team that is objectively worse came as a surprise.

But in an impartially meaningless game, resting a few starters made the most sense.

The Canucks dominated from start to finish with goalie Jiří Patera saving 25 shots in his first shutout this season.

And evidently with 25 shots on goal it’s not like the Reign didn’t have chances, they had many.

“Ultimately we had some good looks,” Ontario coach Andrew Lord said. “Their (Abbotsford) goaltender was excellent. And they were very committed, they blocked a ton of shots tonight. They had second, third efforts ... found a way to keep it (the puck) out of their net and they got their two (goals) and they shut us down, so credit to them.”

But going 0-for-5 on the power play was indicative of the type of night Ontario had.

Abbotsford had their first shot 2:42 into the opening period and that one shot was all Ben Berard needed to score the Canucks’ first goal.

Bennett Schimek scored a power-play goal 11 minutes later with assists from Ty Mueller and Jack Thompson.

Two goals in the first period along with 40 more minutes of impressive defensive coverage would be enough for the Canucks to take the 2-0 victory.

Ontario goalie Erik Portillo takes the loss with 17 saves.

The Reign conclude the regular season as Pacific Division champions with 99 points and a record of 47-20-3-2.

Ontario has a first round bye in the AHL Calder Cup Playoffs. All playoff information is TBD.

“The guys have worked extremely hard for this,” Lord said. “... Day in and day out, so committed, it was a great regular season. And now I think it (the bye week) gives us an opportunity to prepare, get back to basics. There’s going to need to be a blend of obviously work and rest and we’re going to have to stay sharp, right? So it can be an advantage if we go about it the right way or it can be a detriment if we don’t. So I’m confident we'll go about it the right way and be ready for round two.”