From the Rampage Desk: 1st Place

The beloved Rampage enter the weekend with a 5-1 record and a step in front of the rest of the Pacific Division so far. Their scheduled opponents, San Jose and San Diego both own 3-3 records and the Cudas have already lost to the Silver & Black once.

News

– Sunday afternoon Gabe Bourque and AJ Greer were called up to the Avalanche and they both made their season debuts on Tuesday night in a 5-3 win over… the Stars of course. They should be there for at least another 2 weeks.

– Andrei Mironov was recalled on Monday but still has yet to play for the Avs since opening night and isn’t expected to tomorrow in Vegas. More bad news for Miro, his first NA pro goal was deemed to have been tipped in by Tage Thompson so he’s still on the hunt there.

– Sammy Blais has returned to San Antonio and this week practiced on the top line once again.

– Shawn St-Amant has healed from injuries sustained in the Avs Rookie Showcase and was promptly re-assigned to the Eagles on Thursday.

– Other injury news: David Warsofsky skated in a non-contact jersey this week. Trent Vogelhuber was also spotted in yellow but swapped it for full contact. We keep hearing that Klim Kostin didn’t have anything serious after a vicious knee on Sunday but he wasn’t on the ice either.

Texas Recap

The Rampage won 3 in a row vs Texas this weekend but they didn’t look good doing it. Friday they scraped together a shootout win after not showing up for the first 40 minutes of the game. Saturday they took advantage of a goalie meltdown from the Stars backup, who let in 5 goals in 6:25. Sunday was gruesome, somehow they managed to win only registering 14 shots on goal.

All you really need to know is that San Antonio shot 16.5% on the weekend and Texas shot 6%. The shot differential was 99-67, close to 11 per game and that should be a major wake up call to the staff. There are a few dead weight veterans that are killing plays before they even get started and there’s not enough talent to overcome a bunch of passengers like that.

One bright spot was center, and one of only 2 real centers currently on the team, Dominic Toninato. He scored his first two pro goals on Saturday night, which was great to see, but returning from injury he was driving play all weekend. Just my opinion but I think he was probably 3rd in line for the callups Colorado made on Sunday.

Preview: SJ/SD

The last time the Rampage played well it was in San Jose a couple weeks ago when they managed a 3-2 victory and outshot the Barracuda 38-18. This is the first we see of San Diego and the only insight I have is that they should be depleted from all the injuries in Anaheim right now.

Some fun facts:
Power Play is 6th in the AHL at 22.2%
Penalty Kill is 1st at 93.1%

Goals for per game 3.5, 12th
Goals against per game: 2.17, 4th

Shots for per game: 27.17, 24th
Shots against per game: 28.33, 10th

Shooting percentage: 12.9%
Save percentage: .923
PDO: 1052
Special Teams Combined Pct: 1153

Basically the team is riding some hot special teams and goaltending right now plus a high Sh%. Other than a couple of solid games they’ve been outshot massively. I think they have the potential to carry a higher than average Sv% but they won’t shoot like this consistently. If they can’t pick up the pace generating shots on goal and do a better job preventing them, pain is on the horizon. The PK has been fabulous but the Rampage take a lot of penalties, both in general and compared to their opponents. Even if they had given up twice as many goals on the PK they would be excellent so that’s not going to last long term.

Schedule

Friday night vs San Jose, 8:30pm ET
Saturday night vs San Diego, 8pm ET

Links

– Ticket760 has your radio call for all Rampage games

– Topher’s analytics returned for Sunday’s home game, and it wasn’t pretty

Next up

The Rampage head to Iowa for a b2b vs the Wilds Thurs/Fri