The official word dropped just before the Hartford Wolf Pack took the ice to warm up.
They wouldn’t have it Dylan Garand in Game 1 of the best-of-five Atlantic Division Finals against the Hershey Bears.
The New York Rangers recalled Garand, who would join them for Game 6 of their Stanley Cup Playoff series in Raleigh, NC.
With Louis Domingue and now Garand both remember the Rangers, Olof Lindbom it was after the Wolf Pack. Lindbom, a 2018 second-round pick by the Rangers, has played just seven AHL games, none since Mar. 30 when he made 24 saves in a 2-1 loss to Hershey. Lindbom had not seen game action at any level since April 9 when he was with Cincinnati of the ECHL.
“What we’re trying to do is control the controllables,” the interim Wolf Pack coach said Steve Smith he said of the recent change in scoring systems. “We were hoping that he would go to the game. I thought you were fine. He certainly wasn’t the reason we lost this game.”
Lindbom left after allowing Hershey’s fifth goal midway through the third period, going down the wrong way on a layup attempt. Ivan Miroshnichenko. Talyn Boykoa 6-foot-8 rookie, came in his first career AHL appearance and finished a 6-1 loss in net.
Whether Garand might be available for Game 2 in Hershey on Saturday is unknown at this time. Smith also said he had no new information on Lindbom’s condition, but he came away satisfied with the net work he saw in Game 1.
But for his team as a whole, Smith saw plenty of room for improvement. He continues to preach a consistent plan; that means chip-and-chase hockey, which forces opposing defensemen to get pucks, and cause net-front disruptions.
“I think we have to continue to look at the simplicity of our game and the way we have to play,” said Smith. “We just weren’t as physical as them. They defeat us. They have won more wars than us. We will have to win many battles. We will have to go back to a simple style of play.
“We have to be better.”
The Wolf Pack put Game 1 behind them, but so did Hershey.
“It’s going to be a tough battle for these guys,” the Bears coach Todd Nelson said. “They fought hard.”
All Nelson has to do to sell that message is go back to the last round against Lehigh Valley, where the Bears won 5-1 to take a 2-0 series lead only to close in Game 3.
“We’ve already talked about it in the room,” Nelson said. “We were playing for the next game. We have to make sure we stay humble and keep our heads on straight and understand that it won’t always be like this. It will be a battle in the next game.”
The Ontario Reign has the smallest margin of error in their best-of-five Pacific Division Final series against Coachella Valley.
“Just two or three mistakes,” Reign the head coach Marco Sturm said reporters after Ontario’s 3-2 loss to the Firebirds in Game 1 on Wednesday. “Overall, I thought we played a solid game, but the players in the game have to realize that every shift is important.”
That’s all it took against the Firebirds, who led the AHL with 3.50 goals per game in the regular season. But the Sturm and the Reign came out motivated holding Coachella Valley to just 15 shots.
“It disturbs us a little because we played well enough, let’s put it that way,” said Sturm.
― with files from Patrick Williams
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