Ontario Reign set to face San Jose in opening round of 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs this week at Crypto.com Arena
After a third place finish in the Pacific Division standings for a second consecutive year (43-25-3-1, 90 pts), with an almost identical record to last season (42-23-3-4, 91 pts), the Ontario Reign are now set to begin the 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs on Thursday night in Los Angeles.
Although Ontario’s regular season schedule ended Saturday night with a 5-3 loss to Abbotsford, they had to wait until Sunday afternoon’s game between Calgary and San Jose was decided to find out their first round opponent. With the Wranglers earning a 4-0 shutout win, the Barracuda were bumped down to sixth place in the standings and will now travel to Southern California for a best-of-3 series this week.
Due to arena availability in Ontario, the Reign will be playing games 1 and 2 of the opening round on NHL ice at Crypto.com Arena while the LA Kings are in Edmonton for games 3 and 4 of their series. If necessary, the series would shift to Toyota Arena for Game 3 next Monday, April 28. A full look at the series schedule can be seen below:
Game 1 – San Jose at Ontario – Thursday, April 24 at 7 p.m. (Crypto.com Arena)
Game 2 – San Jose at Ontario – Saturday, April 26 at 6 p.m. (Crypto.com Arena)
Game 3* – San Jose at Ontario – Monday, April 28 at 7 p.m. (Toyota Arena)
*if necessary
The Reign opened their season against the Barracuda back in October and suffered a shutout loss to Yaroslav Askarov and his club, but rebounded the next day to secure a win from the first weekend of the year when Samuel Helenius scored twice in the final two minutes.
Although Helenius is now with the Kings after carving out a role on the NHL roster, Ontario finished with a 5-3-0 record from their eight-game regular series against San Jose. Most recently, the teams split a pair of weekend games at Tech CU Arena on April 11 and 12, with the Barracuda securing a 4-1 win from last Friday’s contest before Carter George stole the show the following night with a 33-save shutout in his professional debut.
While Ontario wasn’t able to score on the power play in the first three games of the series, they broke out for three man-advantage tallies in a February road win and ended with five total from the eight contests (13.9%). San Jose, on the other hand, converted on 10 of its 32 man-advantage chances, giving them the best power play success of any team against the Reign this season (31.2%).
Charles Hudon and Martin Chromiak were tied for the team lead in scoring in the regular season series against San Jose, leading Ontario with seven points apiece. Hudon found the back of the net once and assisted on six other tallies, while Chromiak scored five times and helped out on two others. Rookie attacker Aatu Jamsen was also effective on the offensive end against the Cuda, scoring four of his seven goals on the year in games vs. San Jose to go along with an assist. The AHL’s leading scorer for 2024-25, Andrew Poturalski, who finished with 73 points in 59 games, tied for the lead among Barracuda skaters against Ontario with six points alongside top prospect Filip Bystedt, who had a goal and five assists. Forward Ethan Cardwell also had five points vs. Ontario with two goals and three helpers.
This season’s San Jose team is the first Barracuda club to qualify for the postseason since the 2018-19 campaign. A lot has changed on their roster in the last year, including the acquisition of Askarov, but it’s also worth noting that Ontario posted an unblemished record against San Jose during the 2023-24 season with an 8-0-0 record.
Kings fans looking to support the Reign in LA this week can purchase tickets to the first two home games at Crypto.com Arena here.
We’ll have more coverage throughout Ontario’s 2025 Calder Cup Playoff run here on LAKI, in addition to Reign Check Gameday Forecast podcasts with Paige Capistran and me that will be posted on the morning of each postseason game.