Moose open back-to-back with loss in calgary
The Manitoba Moose and Calgary Wranglers face off against one another twice in a mid-week back-to-back from Scotiabank Saddledome in Alberta.
Tuesday night marked the first test, to which the Moose - who entered the game at 5-1-1 over their last five outings - ultimately fell behind and couldn't recover, dropping the contest by way of a 4-2 final.
The Wranglers pulled ahead 2-0 through 20 minutes, at Brett Sutter got his first of the game just eight minutes in, before Cole Schwindt got Calgary's first power play marker of the contest a few minutes later.
The Moose tied it up in the middle stanza, as Brad Lambert potted his 15th of the year with assists going to Nikita Chibrikov and Ville Heinola, before Heinola got on the board again with another assist on Jeffrey Viel's ninth of the year.
Calgary restored its lead in the third period, scoring yet another power play marker, this time off the stick of Sutter, before recent NHL demotee Matt Coronato made it 4-2 on an empty-netter.
ECHL netminding call-up Thomas Milic made his fourth-straight start, making 29 stops on the 32 pucks he faced.
Having recently passed through Waivers unclaimed, forwards Dominic Toninato and Axel Jonsson-Fjallby joined David Gustafsson (who was with the Moose on an injury conditioning stint) on a line for the game. The trio is expected to play together again on Wednesday.
“I thought we played well, all ends of the ice," Toninato said. "I thought we did a good job tonight. Just didn’t get the bounces, the goals we needed and they got theirs."
Manitoba, currently sitting at 17-25-1-1, will get right back at with the Wranglers on Wednesday evening, once again from the Saddledome. That game can be viewed live on AHL TV at 8:00 PM central time.
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