From the Rampage Desk: Week 25 - T minus 5 and Counting

The beloved Rampage return from beautiful North Carolina for their last full home weekend of the season. Playoff hopefuls Bakersfield are in town and badly need wins. Given that San Antonio has lost both 7 games in a row and most of the productive part of their roster, Bako might get exactly that.

Roster/Injury Report

- JT Compher, Anton Lindholm, Rocco Grimaldi and Duncan Siemens remain in Colorado doing good deeds and showcasing their worth to the organization. Proof, if any was needed, that if someone with a clue how to do their job as head of player development were in place maybe the parent club wouldn’t be the worst non-expansion club in modern NHL history. I expect Rocco and Duncan to be on the way back to SA early next week, the other two I’m not so sure about.

- Chris Bigras, Turner Elson and AJ Greer missed the trip to Charlotte with LBI. No word on status as of press time.

- Shawn St Amant returned from an undisclosed injury in game 2 of the Charlotte trip

Recap: Charlotte

The Checkers deployed a strategy of trying to bore the Rampage to death in both games this week and it was surprisingly effective. Injuries and callups have left a skeleton crew manning the SS San Antonio and it shows every night. Offensive chances are difficult to come by, defense and hence goaltending become porous with predictable results.

The Rampage managed a single goal on 21 shots with just 2 in the final period on Tuesday. Shoutout to Brendan Ranford for his 3rd goal and 10th point since joining the team 16 games ago. Mason Geertsen got his 3rd assist of the year on the play. Game mercifully ended 3-1

Wednesday saw the guys double their goal total from the night before but still fell short 5-2, which is misleading. The score was 2-1 with 4 minutes to go and then went haywire. Shoutout to Reid Petryk for his 6th of the year and Ranford for picking up his 2nd of the trip.

Preview: Bakersfield

The Condors and Heats are separated by one win with 5 games to go for the final spot in the Pacific Division. They’re really going to want these two games. The Rampage will too but they don’t really have the firepower to compete right now.

Lines/Pairs from Wednesday

Ranford - Smith - Bourque
Bourke - O’Brien - Petryk
Nantel - Girard - St Amant
Storm - Belzile - Nunn

Boikov - Clark
Geertsen - Gelinas
Young - Hamonic

Martin
Cannata

Scratch: Shaw (nacho), Fick (warm body)
Injured: Bigras, Elson, Greer (LBI) + chronics

Brady Shaw was a scratch although he probably didn’t deserve to be, victim of numbers pretty much. He and Ben Storm have shown well so far and I’d be glad to see both with AHL contracts for next season. Eric Gelinas was played far too much for the amount of turnovers and breakaways he gives up, Charlotte should have paid him off for all the PK work he did for them. Not like there are fantastic options laying about but there are some.

Schedule

Friday vs Bakersfield 8:30pm ET
Sunday vs Bakersfield 4pm ET

All games on Ticket760

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Only the final period on Sunday interferes with the Avs so stop by and say hi.