The Lake Erie Monsters continued their solid play on Saturday night with a 4-3 win on the road in Ontario California.
The win gave the Monsters a 1-0 series lead over the Reign in the AHL’s Western Conference Finals.
After a scoreless first period, Sean Backman put the Reign up 1-0 with a goal at 4:23 of the first period on the power play.
But the Monsters responded with three unanswered goals from Lucas Sediak, Josh Anderson and Ryan Craig to leave the Monsters up 3-1 after 40 minutes.
“We’re anxious to play and we’re anxious to win and show them what we got,” Reign Head Coach Mike Stothers said. “I think they did a good job on us and I thought we did a pretty good job on them. We just need to execute better.”
“We had a lull. It cost us,” continued Stothers. “… Ideally, we’d like to win every game we play. But you know what, there’s four good teams, so nothing’s going to be easy. Nothing worth winning is easy.”
Stothers referred to the rally the Reign staged in the third period after the second period lapse.
Ontario scored twice to even the score at 3-3 on goals from Nic Dowd and Joel Lowry.
The Monsters’ Alex Broadhurst scored just 17 seconds after the Reign had tied it up.
“The way we battled back in the third after the second period that we had just shows the character of this team,” Backman said after the game. “It’s Game 1. We’re long from gone.”
Peter Budaj took the loss on 30 saves while Anton Forsberg picked up the win off 27 saves.
Game 2 is set for Sunday, May 22 at 7:00 pm in Ontario.
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