Gawdin's Early Goal Lifts Ontario Reign to 2-1 Win

Glenn Gawdin’s first-period strike at 13:24 proved to be the difference as the Ontario Reign held off the Henderson Silver Knights for a 2-1 road victory at Lee’s Family Forum on March 8, 2026. The game was described as a tightly contested affair that featured two Reign goals early and a late Silver Knights push that ultimately came up short.

The recap of the Lee’s Family Forum contest notes the Reign built an early cushion, with Gawdin opening the scoring in the first period. Henderson pressed late in the game in search of an equalizer, but could not convert that late surge into the tying goal. The account lists the final score as 2-1 in Ontario’s favor at the Henderson arena.

That close road result came two days after a home meeting between the clubs at Toyota Arena, where Ontario defeated Henderson 4-3 in a shootout on March 6 in front of 9,214 fans. In that game Jakub Brabenec opened the scoring for Henderson at 12:20 of the first period, Kenta Isogai tied early in the second at 6:20 of the period, and Martin Chromiak put Ontario ahead late in the second with a goal with 4:50 remaining. Matyas Sapovaliv tied the game 30 seconds into the third, Andre Lee restored Ontario’s lead later in the period, and Raphael Lavoie forced overtime with a goal at 58:12. The game remained scoreless through overtime and Ontario prevailed in the shootout, with Martin Chromiak credited with the decisive penalty shot, Pheonix Copley earning the win in net and Lindbom taking the loss.

Individual trends run through the back-to-back meetings: Ontario’s Martin Chromiak set a season high with his 19th goal and was credited with the shootout winner in the Toyota Arena game, Andre Lee extended a season-long, five-game point streak and sits as the team’s goal leader with 23, and Kenta Isogai scored his second goal of the season in his first game back with Ontario after a recall from Greenville. Pheonix Copley picked up his third straight win in the March 6 start and has won five of his last six appearances. Shot-related detail from the Toyota Arena game showed the teams were even 11-11 after one period and Ontario outshot Henderson 15-8 in the second period.

Team accounts of the weekend contain conflicting specifics across recaps, with the Toyota Arena game’s 4-3 shootout result and the Lee’s Family Forum 2-1 outcome both recorded in the available game write-ups. The Lee’s Family Forum write-up names Gawdin’s 13:24 first-period goal as the opener in a 2-1 Ontario victory, while the Toyota Arena boxscore provides a fuller chronology of a 4-3 shootout decision in Ontario’s favor, including scoring times for Brabenec (12:20), Isogai (26:20), Chromiak (35:10), Sapovaliv (40:30), Lee (52:57) and Lavoie (58:12), plus the shootout sequence that ended the game.

For the Reign, the road win at Lee’s Family Forum adds to a stretch of tight results against Henderson, and it followed the high-scoring, late dramatics at Toyota Arena where Ontario relied on Chromiak and Copley to secure the shootout. The Gawdin marker at 13:24 will stand as the decisive early strike that kept the Reign’s momentum intact through the rematch in Henderson.