ONTARIO, Calif. -- The Ontario Reign are already digging out of a hole at home.
Two weeks after opening their home schedule with a 6-2 loss to Coachella Valley, the Reign took another hit Saturday night, falling 5-2 to the Henderson Silver Knights and slipping to 0-2 in front of their own fans.
Henderson spread the scoring around with four different players finding the net, but the bigger story was how effectively the Silver Knights kept Ontario from ever settling in offensively. The Reign never found much rhythm, and the night quickly turned into one they’ll want to put behind them.
“There should be no excuse,” Ontario captain Joe Hicketts said. “It’s a home game early in the season … It’s a big game. It may seem early in the year, but these are big points and valuable division games and it’s just disappointing that it’s now two (losses) at home.”
The Reign also made life harder on themselves with discipline issues. Ontario was whistled for eight penalties, handing Henderson six power-play chances.
The good news for the Reign was that they successfully killed all six. The bad news is that they put themselves in that position far too often.
“We have to get away from the hooks and trips and slashes,” Hicketts said. “If we’re going to take a boarding penalty or roughing, sticking up for a teammate - I’m all for that. But we have to get rid of the ticky-tack stuff that is constantly sending us to the (penalty) box.”
Ontario’s first period was flat from the start. The Reign managed just four shots and picked up three penalties, a rough way to begin their fifth game of the season.
Henderson broke through early in the second period when Jackson Hallum scored 1:13 in, with Viliam Kmec and Matyas Sapovaliv assisting. Not long after, Mitch McLain made it 2-0 with his first goal of the season.
Hicketts later gave Ontario a spark with a shorthanded penalty shot goal to cut the deficit to one, but it didn’t shift the game the way the Reign needed. In Aatu Jämsen’s 100th AHL game, he scored on the power play for his first goal of the season, but Henderson answered with three more.
Alexander Holtz scored 38 seconds into the third period off a feed from Jonas Røndbjerg, and McLain and Jakub Demek each added empty-net goals to close it out.
Henderson goalie Carl Lindbom played the first two periods and stopped 9 of 10 shots, while Cameron Whitehead handled the final period and saved 7 of 8.
“(It’s a) really frustrating night,” Ontario coach Andrew Lord said. “Obviously only five games into the year, but a really disappointing night through and through. Pretty much from start to finish.”
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