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Recap: Explosive offense leads Calgary Wranglers to 5-2 victory over the Eagles

Originally posted on Flamesnation  |  By Paige Siewert  |  Last updated 3/8/23

The Calgary Wranglers had a scoring eruption in their first game back home from their road trip. They played their third of four game straight against the Colorado Eagles and had a very busy night for their goal lamp. They got their scoring done through the first two periods and Colorado snuck in a pair of goals to finish up the score at 5-2 Calgary at the end of regulation.

Game at a glance

Oscar Dansk got his first start in net since returning from an injury he suffered just prior to the AHL All-Star break against the Bakersfield Condors. The Eagles had already seen two straight games of Wolf and the last game included three consecutive power play goals for the opposing team. It was a better time than any to get some time in for the other guy waiting on the bench.

Dansk had a great game back and was a lot of the reason the Wranglers had so much success for this Tuesday night match-up. Things started rolling with an opening goal by Clark Bishop. Ilya Solovyov passed the puck up a majority of the ice and found Kevin Rooney who passed the puck up to Bishop to bury and take an early lead 2:40 into the game.

Next up was Josh Brook with his first goal of the season off an unassisted play 6:07 into the period. The Eagles tried to clear their own zone, but Brook intercepted the pass and took a shot from the blue line and beat the Eagles’ netminder.

That ended the scoring portion of the first period and the Wranglers finished ahead 2-0 and leading 12-8 in shots. In the second, the scoring trend for the home team continued. 

4:18 into the period, Kevin Rooney got a perfect view of the net and took the shot. It paid off and the Wranglers rose up to three unanswered goals. Rooney’s goal was also unassisted.

Later in the period, Connor Zary also netted a goal with a skilful evasive manoeuvre by Yan Kuznetsov that made the space for Zary to tip in the puck. This goal came 9:11 into the second and Josh Brook also picked up his second point of the night with the assist.

In the same minute, just 34 seconds later, Adam Klapka tipped the puck in off his body just before the Eagles net was popped off. The officials reviewed this goal and it did end up standing to put the Wranglers up 5-0. Mitch McLain assisted on Klapka’s marker.

The second finished up with the Wranglers scoring five unanswered up to this point in the game and the Wranglers narrowly out-shot the Eagles 19-16 in the second period.

4:43 into the third period, the Eagles scored their opening goal and beat Oscar Dansk for the first time of the night. Exactly, 5:01 later, Eagles scored against and tried to manufacture a comeback. It came up short and two goals would be the only headway they would make.

At the end of three periods, the Wranglers won the game by a score of 5-2. Oscar Dansk stopped 34 of 36 Eagles shots and also picked up the third star on the night. Josh Brook was awarded the second star and Kevin Rooney was the first star of the night with a goal and an assist.

Highlights

Next up

If it’s felt like the Wranglers have been playing the Eagles for two weeks, it is getting pretty close to it. This series finally closes off on Wednesday night for game four of four. In this series the Wranglers lead with a record of 2-1-0-0. Wednesday’s game will get started at the same time as Tuesday’s at 7:00 p.m. MT at the Scotiabank Saddledome.

This article first appeared on Flamesnation and was syndicated with permission.

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