A Monarchy Fallen: How the Ontario Reign Lost their Chance at a 2022 Calder Cup Throne
One day after their affiliated NHL team, the LA Kings, got eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Ontario Reign met the same fate in their Calder Cup run. After a solid first round 2–0 against the San Diego Gulls, the Reign found themselves in a much different scenario in the second round. The Colorado Eagles — the very team who had eliminated the Reign from the 2020–2021 season’s Pacific Division playoffs — had backed them into a corner with a 2–0. Just one more loss, and the Reign would be swept right out of the bracket, and from 2022 Calder Cup contention.
But this was a predicament that seemed entirely unlike the Reign’s regular season experience. You could almost hear the record scratch, freeze frame, and ‘Yup, that’s me,’ playing over the top of their entrance onto the ice for Game 3. Statistically, the Ontario Reign had looked dominant in the regular season. Individual players had broken not only franchise records, but league ones too. TJ Tynan and Jordan Spence earned their spot on the All-Star team, and over the course of the season had helped to accrue the highest number of goals the team had seen in franchise history. The team desecrated their opponents on power plays, with Martin Frk coming in joint second in the league in power play scoring, and Tynan first in the league on power play assists.
And yet, a lot of that magic seemed to evaporate once the playoffs began. Maybe it was because Jordan Spence’s defensive prowess was missing after being recalled to join the Kings in the Stanley Cup. Maybe it was because the Eagles had always been something of a kryptonite for the Reign, having beaten them four out of the six times they met in the 2021–2022 season. Whatever it was, this Reign were not the monarchs that had ruled over the Pacific Division throughout the season.
The statistical performances of these star players were somewhat unrecognisable from what we’d seen prior to the advent of the playoffs. TJ Tynan had made his mark on the league by securing the second highest points of any player within it. His 98 points across 62 games gave him an average of 1.58 per game — a number which dwindled to 0.6 in the playoffs. The mathematical expectations for his performance based on the regular season would have predicted approximately 8 points (1.13 goals, 6.77 assists) across the 5 games played. In reality this was just 3 (1 goal, 2 assists).
Power play king Martin Frk remained consistent in some aspects, such as keeping his spot as the second highest points scorer of the team. However, those famed power play goals of the regular season seemed to disappear into the aether; no longer joint second in the league, he didn’t even score a single power play goal over the team’s five playoff games. The power play prowess of the Ontario Reign seemed to have become something of a distant memory.
But their even strength situations weren’t helped either. With Jordan Spence, who had scored the highest number of points of any defenceman in the regular season, recalled to the LA Kings, a big portion of the Reign’s defensive strength was missing. Christian Wolanin slotted in as the main points-contributor of the team’s defencemen, gaining 4 points (1 goal, 3 assists), but that didn’t stop the Colorado Eagles from sporting three of the top ten defensive points scorers in the playoffs: Jordan Gross and Roland McKeown currently sit at joint first and third positions respectively, with 7 and 6 points, while Jacob MacDonald sits in joint eighth, with 4. And amongst this, Wolanin is the only player of the aforementioned defenders who experienced more goals against than goals for while he was on the ice, suggesting that the Eagles’ top defenders have made a significant contribution to their opponents’ difficulty in scoring goals. Combine that with the fact that both Gross and MacDonald sit in the top ten for power play assists of all skaters, it’s safe to conclude that the Reign just didn’t hold the defensive cards that the Eagles did.
After Game 3 concluded, LA Kings Insider reported on assistant coach Chris Hajt’s opinion as there being ‘things that obviously we didn’t do well enough to win as a team that maybe we did well all year,’ but that ‘it’s a learning experience for us as a group.’
Ultimately, while the Ontario Reign may have had an early exit from the Calder Cup playoffs, they have proven to be a talented and promising roster. The last time the team got further than this in the playoffs was the 2015–2016 season, in which they made it all the way to the conference finals where they finally fell to the Lake Eerie Monsters, who went on to win the Calder Cup finals against the Hershey Bears. And with eighteen rookies on the roster this season, it marks the highest number of rookies the team has had for all seasons since then, bar the 2018–2019 season (in which they came last in their division).
So despite a disappointing end to their 2021–2022 season, the positives the Ontario Reign have conceived have far outshone the negatives. A collection of fresh, young players with promising futures has pushed them further than they’ve been in years; statistics that command respect from royal subjects — there is so much for the Reign to take away from this AHL season. And no doubt they will keep fighting for the crown, for the chance to claim their regency, and to finally reign over the AHL.
