REIGN FINAL – Reign 3, Silver Knights 2 – Sturm, Copley, Clarke

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• News post

• Jared Shafran

Goals from Quinton Byfield, Brandt Clarke and Tyler Madden, combined with 27 saves from Pheonix Copley propelled the Ontario Reign (8-5-0-1) past the Henderson Silver Knights (5-12-0) Sunday afternoon by a score of 3-2 at Toyota Arena. Ontario’s players wore specialty jerseys and the team’s fans supported Hockey Fights Cancer during the victory.

• Quinton Byfield
• Tyler Madden
• Pheonix Copley
• Brandt Clarke
• Alex Turcotte

• Marco Sturm

# Marco Sturm

It was better. I think the effort was there. I think the commitment was there. I think [the players] tried to do the right thing. These guys work. They come to work every day. We just didn’t connect as well as we used to, but I think that’s normal. It’s been a hard ten days or a couple of weeks, so I’m glad we came up with the big two points tonight.

I’m saying it every time, but special teams are big. Yesterday we lost not just because of the PK goal against but because we had the opportunity to score a couple times on the power play and didn’t. Today was different and we won, so sometimes special teams makes the difference.

It started with [Quinton Byfield], especially. I think that his best game was yesterday. He had the puck a lot, he was breaking out everywhere, and it all went through him. That’s how it should be. Today, he was okay, but I think yesterday was really good and you can tell he’s slowly getting his feet and body going. Same with Alex Turcotte. There’s a few guys who just have to be patient and we still have to work with them. All of them still have a lot left in the tank and we’re here to try and develop and help them, to get them up [with the Kings] as soon as possible.

Especially for [Alex Turcotte], being away for such a long time and now playing as a wing, sometimes its not fair to the player. We expect a lot from him and he hasn’t really played [as a winger] in a long time. That’s why, even when he makes a mistake, its okay. You have to help him to, because I’m the guy who’s going to put him in that situation and I will be the guy who is going to help him out. He will be the guy who is going to get better each week. I think, with [Lias Andersson] gone for a bit, we needed somebody to play with Byfield. We have a lot of centermen, so we made that switch and we’ll see how long it goes. I think [that line] had a pretty good start. I think there’s no reason to change that.

# Pheonix Copley

It definitely feels good. We were desperate and hungry for a win, and you could see that we came out pretty hard, so it feels nice to get back to our winning ways. I think that and it can be a learning lesson for us going through that as a team. Obviously its very frustrating to be losing and not winning, so I think going forward we can take that as a lesson and use that hunger to not let that ever happen again.

For me, I want [my mentality] to be the same. There can be times when that’s more challenging than others. Obviously, when you’re losing, it’s a little bit more challenging to play the way I want to play. But it’s hockey and it’s sports, there’s wins and losses, so you just have to roll with the punches, learn from it, and get better.

You just have to move on from it. That kind of stuff happens and if we’re going to win games and if we’re going to be a good team, we have to push through adversity. We did that tonight and that’s why we came out on top. We could have easily folded. That was obviously a tough break for us, but the guys came back and scored right away. I think that helped everybody and got everybody going again.