Gulls starting to pick up points after harsh 1-3-1 start

Games are coming fast on the American Hockey League schedule for the San Diego Gulls, who hope to gather some meaningful standings points with them.

The Gulls put together a modest two-game point streak following their Oct. 29 home ice win over the San Jose Barracuda and a 4-3 overtime loss at Coachella Valley the next night. The Pacific Division-leading Colorado Eagles ended that with a 3-1 win on Sunday. But the Gulls bounced back with their most impressive victory of the season, 6-3, at the second place Henderson Silver Knights on Wednesday to post five out of a possible eight points in the four-game stretch.

It’s a start.

Nest up on the docket are back-to-back games this weekend against the Ontario Reign, the Gulls’ Southern California archrival, currently sitting in fourth place in the 10-team division – five points ahead of San Diego.

The Gulls host the Reign on Friday, Nov. 7, then turn around to play in Ontario on Saturday, Nov. 8.

San Diego returns to home ice for a Nov. 14 game against the Bakersfield Condors and Nov. 15 against the defending Calder Cup champion Abbotsford Canucks.

The AHL’s Pacific Division is displaying a bit of scramble to start the 2025-26 season. The Eagles are on top, nothing surprising there. The Eagles (8-2-0, 16 points) won last season’s division title.

But the Henderson Silver Knights, last season’s cellar dweller was in the division standings, faced off the season with a 7-1-1 record and seven-game winning streak.

The Canucks, who eliminated Colorado in last season’s division finals en route to winning the club’s first Calder Cup championship, was in last place to start the new season at 2-7-0-1.

The division remains competitive. After skating to their first home ice victory on the season on Wednesday, Oct. 29, the Gulls made the short trip to Coachella Valley on Thursday, falling 4-3 in overtime to extend their points streak to two games (1-0-1).

Matthew Phillips scored his second goal of the season, Justin Bailey scored his first goal of the season and Yegor Sidorov scored a goal for the third consecutive game as the Gulls gathered in a key standings point with the overtime loss on Oct. 30 to the Firebirds. Nico Myatovic and Ryan Carpenter each logged their second assists of the season. Calle Clang stopped 18 of 22 shots in regulation and overtime.

San Diego out-shot the Firebirds 45-22, though they had to recover from a 2-0 deficit. Three consecutive Gulls goals put the hosts in a 3-2 hole. But J.R. Avon scored his first goal of the season at 14:53 to send the game into overtime. The Firebirds won at 4:04 of OT on Tyson Jugnauth’s first tally of the season. Phillips received third star honors with a goal and assist.

The Gulls got back in the win column Wednesday night with nothing short of an impressive performance. The six goals were a season high for the San Diego team.

There were many individual notables.

•Sidorov extended his point streak to five games with a goal and two assists to match his AHL single-game career high set two times before.

•Nikolas Brouillard scored his first goal of the season and tacked on two assist to match Sidorov in the game with three points.

•Sasha Pastujov scored his second goal of the season and added an assist for two points while Tristan Luneau and Bailey each scored their second goals of the season while Mayatovic notched his first goal of the season.

•Phillips, the team’s prime playmaker, dished out his team-leading eighth and ninth assists of the young season to pace the Gulls in scoring with 12 points to go with five multi-point games and a four-game points streak.

•Jan Mysak contributed two assists while goaltender Ville Husso stopped 18 of 21 shots to record his third victory of the season for the Gulls, who improved their season record to 3-4-2.

San Diego out-shot Henderson, which had become an early season nemesis with three wins over the local skaters, by a count of 25-21. The Gulls were one-of-two on the power play while holding the Silver Knight to one-of-four on the man-advantage.

“We did a lot of great things in the game,” San Diego head coach Matt McIlvane said. “That’s a great rush team. Trying to stymie some of that is certainly an objective. We’ve been creating so many scoring chances, and we’ve been waiting for the ketchup bottle to pop, and then it all spills out. And I think that happened for us today with a three-goal first period and then coming back with another three.”

“We knew they were on a bit of a heater going in and we owed them one,” Pastujo said. “They beat us three times already in this young season. I think coming off to a hot start was key for us and going up 3-0 early really set the tone for the game and from there we rode it out.

“It’s huge. We’ve been talking about it, and it was only a matter of time. Tonight, it was nice to pot a couple, but we’re not satisfied. It’s only one game. Obviously, it’s nice to help the team win but there’s a lot of work to do. There’s still 60-something games left, so we’re going to build off this and take it one game at a time.”

“We know we’re a good team and we preach that every day. You can call it bounces or what you want, but we haven’t been on the right side of a lot of these close games. It’s a good sign to be in a lot of these close games, but we just got to slowly learn how to win those and tonight’s a good example. They kept coming back, but we kept putting the pedal to the medal and not really giving them a chance but staying to our game throughout. We’re just going to try to build on this one. We have Ontario in a home-and-home this weekend, so what better weekend to keep some momentum than that.” 

McIlvane noted that Ontario is currently the best defensive team in the league, so the Gulls will need to proceed with caution. “We know that creating chances is going to be a big battle, but we know we’re a great offensive team,” the San Diego bench boss said. “Hopefully we can carry this momentum into that game.”

Birds of a feather

The Gulls hosted the Eagles on Sunday. The teams had met previously at Pechanga Arena with the Colorado visitors posting a 2-0 win with the aid of an empty net goal. The teams entered Sunday’s game separated by 10 points in the standings.

But the Gulls opened Sunday’s game with a pair of power play chances, cashing in on the second one as Phillips scored, assisted by Tim Washe and Sidorov, at 8:41.

The first period ended 1-0 in San Diego’s favor with the Gulls holding an 11-6 edge in shots.

The second period ended with an 11-8 Colorado edge and a 1-1 deadlock after Brian Yoon lit the lamp at 14:32, assisted by Alex Barre-Boulet and Jack Ahcan.

Shots through two periods were 19-17 San Diego.

The Eagles broke the tie 5:53 into the third period as the puck went from one side of the Gulls net to the other where Ronnie Attard scored his first goal of the season by whipping a shot past San Diego netminder Husso. Assists went to Barre-Boulet and Jayson Megna.

2-1 Colorado.

The Gulls went on the power play for the remaining two minutes of regulation. The hosts brought Husso out of the net for an extra attacker, but the Eagles diffused that with an empty net goal at 18:37 scored by Keaton Middleton, unassisted on a shot deep in the Colorado defensive zone.

3-1 Colorado.

The Eagles took command in the final period with a 12-6 shot advantage, 29-25 for the game. Colorado finished the contest with three unanswered goals. The Eagles swept the three-star awards: Attard (first), Barre-Boulet (second) and Yoon (third).

Isak Posch stopped 24 of 25 shots to pick up the win in the net while Husso stopped 26 of 28 shots his way.

Attendance was 5,019.

Around the AHL

Colorado leads the Pacific Division with a 9-2-0-1 record and 19 points, followed by Henderson at 7-2-1 with 15 points, Calgary at 6-3-2 and 14 points, Ontario at 6-3-1 and 13 points, Tucson at 4-4-2 and 10 points, San Jose at 4-5-1 and Coachella Valley at 4-4-1 each with nine points, the Gulls and Bakersfield with identical 3-4-2 records and eight points and Abbotsford at the bottom with five points.

The top seven teams in the division qualify for the Calder Cup playoffs. Currently, five teams in the division have 0.500 records or better.

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins lead the Atlantic Division at 8-2-1 with 16 points, the Syracuse Crunch leads the North Division at 8-2-0 with 16 points and the Grand Rapids Griffins lead the Central Division at 8-0-0 with 16 points. The Griffins are the only undefeated team remaiing in the 32-team league.