The Iowa Wild spent Wednesday night in Charlotte taking on the Checkers in the first night of a back-to-back with another bottom-scraping AHL team and West Division Rival.
No matter than the Checkers are one of the Wild’s only competitors for the title of worst record in the AHL (they have the second worst record in the AHL), The Wild weren’t able to stop their current skid, which has seen a deluge of young players signed to PTOs to replace the huge number of players that are out with injuries for Iowa.
The end result was the Wild’s sixth straight loss with Guillaume Gelinas, Gustav Olofsson, Joel Rechlicz, Josh Harding, Brad Richard, and Brett Bulmer among a long list of injured Wild.
Among the new faces was forward Ian Schultz, who signed a PTO with Iowa on Tuesday. The Wild also got Ruslan Fedotenko back after he missed seven straight games. Those seven games came just two games after he joined Iowa. On Wednesday he slotted into a line with Schultz and rookie forward Greg Wolfe.
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John Curry got the start for Iowa and allowed just one goal in the first period with the Checkers outshooting Iowa 6-5 in that frame. From that point forward the Wild would create lots of opportunities and outshoot the Checkers. Iowa fired 19 shots in goal in the second period alone. They’d finish the game with a 36-24 edge ion shots.
In the third Danny Syvret, who just signed another PTO with Iowa, put Iowa on the board with assists to Jonathon Blum and Olivier Archambault.
Archambault has played five games with Iowa since his recent call-up. In that time he’s posted a goal and three assists.
Nonetheless, the game became 4-1 when Curry allowed Chad LaRose to score his second of the game, a shorthanded tally, with just about 12 minutes left in the game. That led coach John Torchetti to remove Curry from the game, replacing him with Johan Gustafsson, who hasn’t seen a ton of action since returning from a stint with the Alaska Aces.
Gus would face just three shots the rest of the game and he blocked all three, finishing the game out with a 4-1 win in favor of Charlotte.
Once again, Tyler Graovac led the team in shots, registering six. Syvret put up five.
Iowa will get a chance for revenge on Thursday when they play the second game in their back-to-back against the Checkers.