Gulls face off new year with Pacific Division challenges

The start of the new year has created some very interesting scenarios in the American Hockey league.

With seven teams separated by just six standings points entering Wednesday’s slate of games, from third through ninth place, it would appear the Pacific Division’s seven playoff berths are furiously up for grabs. It’s essentially a playoff game each night to see which team can better the better of the other to either move up the standings or keep hold of their place.

Wednesday’s midweek encounter between the host San Diego Gulls and San Jose Barracuda was a case in point. The Barracuda, sitting in third place, came into the contest just four points ahead of the Gulls, sitting in seventh place. A San Diego win could scramble the order a bit but a Cuda victory would create more separation between the California rivals.

It was a key matchup and both teams clearly wanted to one-up the other for precious standings points.

Both teams faced off the game with a power play. The Barracuda stopped the Gulls’ manpower but the hosts could not stop San Jose’s. Colin White netted the power play goal at 5:01 from teammates Filip Bystedt and Luca Cagnoni. The goal was White’s seventh of the season while Bystedt picked up his 16^th assist and Cagnoni his 15^th helper.

The first period ended 1-0 in San Jose’s favor with the teams tied at 10 shots apiece.

The Gulls entered the game winners in three of their four games since the holiday break and they started to get it into gear in the final two periods.

The hosts tied the game at 4:08 of the second period as Yegor Sidorov netted his seventh goal of the season off a pass from behind the cage. Judd Caulfield and Nathan Gaucher received credit for the assists –the eighth of the season for Caulfield and the fourth for Gaucher.

San Diego won the shot total in the period 12-7 to take a 22-17 edge through 40 minutes.

The Gulls were unable to take advantage of a five-minute major for spearing by Jake Furlong, who also received a game misconduct.

The Cuda did not miss on a shot at 14:53 as White skated in to score his second goal of the game. Shane Bowers and Lucas Carlsson The goal was White’s eighth of the season, the assist the second for Bowers and sixth for Carlsson.

The shots were 7-4 in favor of San Jose in the period as the game reached the final four minutes of regulation play.

SD starter Calle Clang vacated the net with 1:45 to play in search of an extra attacker. The Gulls made it work as Matthew Phillips scored with 53 seconds to play to tie the game at 2-all. The goal was Phillips’ team-leading 26^th point of the season, assisted by Tristan Luneau (sixth) and Sam Colangelo (seventh).

The Barracuda got the benefit of a late penalty for hooking with 34 seconds left.

The Gulls finished regulation with a narrow 27-26 edge in shots.

The penalty carried over into the five-minute overtime period. Clang sat on the puck to keep the game even. The Cuda maintained possession for 1:45 but could not score. The visitors went back to work but could not score. The OT started four-on-three to reflect the penalty before the teams went back to three-on-three skating. Clang stopped a two-on-one to keep the Gulls even.

The visitors out-shot the hosts 4-1 in the OT period but the game continued into a nominal three-on-three shootout to determine a winner, with the loser guaranteed a point in the standings.

The shootout proceeded to seven rounds with San Jose pulling out a 3-2 tiebreaker and a 3-2 win.

Oliver Wahlstrom scored to give San Jose a 1-0 lead. San Diego’s Sidorov shot was saved to conclude the first round. Egor Afansasyev missed for the visitors as did Phillips in the second round. Bystedt missed to open the third round and the Gulls faced a do-or-die to keep the shootout going. Justin Bailey did just that with a goal to knot the tiebreaker at 1-1.

It would take four more rounds to decide the outcome. White and Sam Colangelo each scored to send the tiebreaker into a fifth round. Both goaltenders came up big with saves to extend the tiebreaker to a sixth round with San Jose’s Jakub Skarek making a sprawling save on Sasha Patujov. Both netminders posted clean slates to advance the tiebreaker to a seventh round. Cam Lund scored for the Barracuda while Cal Burke had his close-in chance smothered by Skarek to conclude the show in front of 5,063 fans in Pechanga Arena.

Skarek earned No. 1 star of the game with 25 saves while Phillips, with the game-tying goal in regulation, was voted No 2 star. Sidorov, with the Gulls’ opening goal, was tabbed as the third star.

The Gulls (14-9-6-2) picked up a point but the Cuda (19-11-1-2) picked up two points to pull one point further ahead of the Gulls. Had Phillips not extended the game into overtime, San Jose would have collected a two-point advantage in the standings over the Gulls.

Heading into this weekend’s games — the Gulls take flight to first place Colorado — four teams are separated by just two standings points, from fifth through eight place. The Gulls are tied with two other teams: Henderson and Coachella Valley. The trio sits two points behind fifth place Calgary and five points behind San Jose.

Colorado is now tied with Ontario for the division lead at 44 points — three points ahead of the Condors and Barracuda.

Expect more drama after this weekend’s set.

“Yeah, it’s huge,” Phillips said after the team managed to pick up a key standings point. “I mean, obviously a disappointing result tonight and pretty flat on the bench after that five-minute power play, but the message was to just kind of regroup and put that behind us. And we battled really hard to push it to overtime and had a couple chances to win the game still, but we’ll take the point.”

Clang stopped 29 of 31 shots in regulation and overtime as the team’s unsung hero.

“Calle played outstanding,” Phillips said. “He’s probably the only guy that can say he had his best game tonight. He made some huge saves, especially in overtime there, and gave us every chance in the shootout, too. He was unreal.”

The late game let-down as obvious after the hosts went sour on the five-minute major penalty to break the game wide open.

“It’s an emotional bit for all your top guys when you get a five-minute power play in the third period, and you have an opportunity to take a lead in the game, and it felt like they might have had maybe more shots than we did on the power plays,’ San Diego head coach Matt McIlvane said. “Certainly, we didn’t get the kind of looks that we were hoping for over the course of five minutes, and give some credit to their kill, but we have to look into that and see where we can get better. The response is what matters. It’s the next play mentality, that part was behind us. It would have been a mistake to get lost in what was in the past, and the truth is, the third period was too up and down for the style of play that we want. Then we make our way through the last bit of the game, and it’s a miracle goal by Phillips, but there are a lot of parts of the third that it’s not really our style of play.

“Calle was great. I think from the beginning of the game, he has a calming presence back there for us, getting through the penalty kill and in overtime and the shootout and the barrage of chances. I thought he was excellent, and I thought (Nathan Gaucher’s) line was excellent today too. The Gaucher, (Judd) Caulfield, and Yegor (Sidorov) line, obviously Sidorov gets on the board but, they were impactful every shift. I thought that they drove a lot of play for us.”

“Bottom line, there were a lot of very competitive parts of this game that were excellent, that are our style of play. I’m not sure that it was a full 60-minutes.”

The Gulls travel to Littleton for games Friday and Saturday sitting eight points out of first place. Phillips said he and his teammates are looking forward to the matchup against the first place Eagles.

I” think it’s really exciting.,” he said. “I think it’s a great challenge for us. It’s the top team in the division. It’s probably the most fun place in the American League to go play on the road, and it’s a test for us, and it’s going to be two really fun games.” 

The Gulls bench boss echoed that.

“Great team, great opposition,” McIlvane said. “We like to think we’re a great team as well. We’re excited for the matchup.“

New Year Start
The Gulls hosted the Coachella Valley Firebirds, team immediately below them in the Pacific Division standings on Friday, Jan. 2, to ring in the New Year opposite the Trust & Will Holiday Bowl at Snapdragon Stadium.

The hockey game attracted a good crowd despite playing against a major college football attraction.

The Firebirds weathered a two-man disadvantage early in the contest pitting division rivals. Coincidental penalties were called against Ian McKinnon and Mitchell Stephens for slashing.

Coachella Valley got on the scoreboard first at 7:38 as Logan Morrison tallied his 15^th goal of the season, assisted by Jani Nyman.

Shots favored the Firebirds early on – 6-2 — but the Gulls did create good looks at the Coachella Valley net.

The visitors made it 2-0 n their seven shot – a power play goal at 12:00 by Morrison, his second goal of the game and 16^th of the season, assisted by Oscar Fisker Molgaard (his 12^th assist of the season).

But the hosts gave the large crowd something to cheer for at 13:25 when Justin Bailey, assisted by Roland McKeown and Sahsa Pastujov. Potted the Gulls’ first goal of the night.

The San Diego fans were back on their feet applauding their team 50 seconds later as team captain Ryan Carpenter scored his sixth goal of the season, assisted by Noah Warren, to knot the score at 2-all.

San Diego starter Ville Husso was kept busy by facing 10 shots, stopping eight, in the opening period. The Firebirds led 10-5 in the shot counter but not on the scoreboard.

The second period was rough and tumble with one goal by Coachella Valley (Llegyton Roed at 4:58, assisted y John Hayden and Gustav Olofsson), 17 shots, two four-minute roughing minors and a fight to liven up the game.

Roed’s tally put the Firebirds up, 3-2, early in the period. But most of the action occurred late in the period as San Diego’s Tim Washe and Coachella Valley’s Stephens were handed doubles minors and Stian Solberg (hosts) and David Goyette (visitors) were handed five-minute fighting majors and game ejections resulting from a heated scrum in front of the Coachella Valley net at 18:48.

The Gulls turned the shot total in the second period in their favor at 9-8, though the Firebirds led 18-14 through two periods.

Coachella Valley took a 4-2 lead at 2:10 of the third period as Eduard Sale netted his fourth goal of the season, assisted bu Jagger Firkus (18^th assist of season) and Andrei Lohko (fourth assist).

It set up an exciting finish for the 7.923 in attendance on Nineties Night.

The Gulls went on the power play at 9:54 in a bid to draw closer on the scoreboard as Tyson Jugnauth was called for hooking. The Firebirds killed the penalty, but the Gulls whipped off six shots.

The San Diego net went empty with 3:11 to play. A Coachella Valley play initially got possession of the puck along the boards and carried into the Gulls defensive zone but couldn’t maintain possession as a San Diego defender closed ground.

That exchange ran the clock below two minutes to play.

Te Gulls called a timeout with 1:24 remaining with the Gulls net still vacant. The Firebirds hit the frame twice before Hayden finally put the game to bed with an empty net goal at 19: 21 to send the sizable crowd to the exits. Olofsson received credit for the assist. The goal was Hayden’s eighth of the season.

5-2 Coachella Valley.

Final shots were 27-26 in the Gulls’ favor after a 13-8 advantage in the third period.

The Firebirds swept the three stars: No. 1 Morrison (two goals), No. 2 Sale (one goal) and No 3 Roed (one goal).

Winning goaltender Nikke Kokko made 25 saves on 27 shots while Husso stopped 21of 25 shots he faced.

Coachella Valley improved to 16-10-4 with 36 points while the Gulls, who saw their three-game points streak come to an end, dropped to 14-9-6-1with 35 points.

“They defended hard,” SD head coach Matt McIlvane said of the visitors. “They dropped their last couple of games, and you could tell that they were a team that was urgent to defend, and it was going to really test us, and we didn’t have enough of the juice to be able to push back against it. We weren’t finding our shots and our goals as easily as we have at times. You go down 2-0, you battle back and then settle the score. Then, they win a big net front battle, and we couldn’t find one of those in the game the rest of the way. So, it ends up being the difference.

“We’ve seen ourselves be able to battle back numerous times, so we know we’re capable of it. It didn’t fall for us tonight. I did think that we got more looks as the game went, but it was not enough and not enough volume, not enough looks and probably earned that.

On a brighter note, McKeown picked up his 200^th career AHL point in the game.

“It’s been a fun ride,” the Gulls defenseman said. “Very grateful to play pro this long, and I really enjoy playing here. It’s a great city, the fans are great, the boys are really close. This year, we’ve really come together, and it’s nice to see the success. We were in the 0.600 win percentage before this evening. I think that shows a lot of growth and success. To be a championship team in this league, you really need that. You need to get in the six, seven hundreds to have a real chance, so it’s nice to see that and we’ll continue to get better in the new year.”