Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
The Ontario Reign needed someone to step up, and Pheonix Copley has obliged. He is making up for lost time in the process, too.
An injury has kept top goaltending prospect Erik Portillo out of action since Feb. 17. Before that, Reign head coach Marco Sturm had utilized a very conventional goaltending arrangement. Copley, the veteran. Portillo, the prospect. They shared work. Both had also spent time with the parent Los Angeles Kings.
And the arrangement worked, as the Reign challenged in the top half of the Pacific Division. But Portillo went out just as the Reign hit a particularly packed portion of their schedule, including a stretch of 15 games in 31 days that ends with today’s home match-up with Colorado.
Copley has started 15 of Ontario’s last 17 contests, with only Dryden McKay (Mar. 8 at San Diego) and Jacob Ingham (Mar. 23 at Iowa) spelling him. He has worked back-to-back nights on three different occasions, and he took three of four starts on the team’s swing through the Central Division last week.
It’s been 15 months since Copley saw his 2023-24 season with the Kings cut short by an ACL injury and subsequent surgery. He was sidelined after a breakthrough season in Los Angeles in 2022-23, when he made 35 starts and went 24-6-3 with a 2.64 goals-against average and a .903 save percentage.
Still, the Kings saw fit to bring Copley back, signing him to a one-year extension on the first day of free agency last summer. And their faith has paid off, as Copley has done in Ontario what every head coach asks a goaltender to do: give his team a chance to win. Copley is 21-14-1 in 36 appearances for the Reign, with a 2.43 GAA and a .906 save percentage.
“It’s been great,” Copley said of the workload. “I feel really good, and I’m happy to play. I love it.”
The schedule hardly eases up on Ontario after this weekend. They begin April with five straight road games, three of them in San Jose against a Barracuda team that is within striking distance of the second-place Reign in the Pacific Division. Locking down home-ice advantage in a short first-round or division semifinal series will be critical.
“I’m just trying to give the team a chance to win every time they tell me I’m going to play,” Copley said.
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
