The hockey season is quickly coming to a close, at least for those teams that will not advance to the championship playoffs, and starting a new beginning for those teams that will advance past regular season play.
The Anaheim Ducks are still hopeful of landing a berth in the upcoming NHL Stanley Cup playoffs while the Ducks’ top affiliate in the American Hockey League, the San Diego Gulls, remain hopeful of continuing their season in the upcoming Calder Cup playoffs.
Both teams need to help themselves on the scoreboard and get help from other teams in the process.
The Gulls have certainly played their share of noteworthy (read exciting) games this season while riding a seven-game winning streak in February to launch themselves into a bona fide race for the American Hockey League’s final Pacific Division playoff berth.
The Gulls’ recent March schedule has not been as prolific, though wins have still come, though not just in bunches as before. The NHL Anaheim Ducks’ top development team essentially finds itself in must-produce mode as it enters a crucial four-game homestand, the longest remaining of such in regular season play.
The Gulls have 11 regular season games left on the 2024-25 schedule and enter Wednesday’s homestand opener against the San Jose Barracuda seven points off the mark for the division’s seventh and final playoff berth.
The Gulls host the Tucson Roadrunners on Friday and the Calgary Wranglers on Saturday to highlight the weekend and close out the homestand with a game April 2 against the Abbotsford Canucks.
The numbers pretty much reveal what’s needed, and it’s not necessarily all grim despite the San Diego team having lost four of its last five games to drop back into the division cellar (tied with the Henderson Silver Knights with 56 points).
The Gulls trail Tucson, currently the seventh-place team in the division standings, by seven standings points. A win on Wednesday against the fifth place Barracuda (32-21-4-4) and a head-to-head win on Friday against the Roadrunners (29-27-3-2) will go far in making up lost ground, especially if Tucson drops its game Wednesday in Ontario.
Things could definitely take an exciting turn in the final few weeks leading up to the Calder Cup playoffs.
The Roadrunners possess 63 standings points heading into Wednesday’s AHL slate. The Bakersfield Condors (26-25-6-3) immediately follow with 61 standings points. Five points back are the Gulls and Silver Knights.
Bakersfield also has a game on Wednesday, and that’s the problem the Gulls (24-29-5-3 face: There are two teams ahead of them in the race for the division’s final playoff berth. Technically, make that three teams as Henderson (26-32-3-1) would own a tiebreaker over San Diego.
The Gulls have had a slight roster makeover as players have come in from colleges on amateur tryouts and Ducks draft picks have also arrived. A trade and c all-ups have also reared their heads.
The club’s recent downturn started with a sudden dearth in offense following 3-1 and 3-0 losses to the visiting first place Colorado Eagles March 14-15 and a 4-0 midweek shutout loss in San Jose on March 19. That dropped the Gulls nine points off the pace before engineering a 4-0 shutout win last Friday (March 21) to start a pivotal two-game series in Nevada to move them back up to seven points behind Tucson.
The Gulls were unable to complete a weekend sweep, however, as the Silver Knights bounced back with a key 4-2 win on Saturday (March 22).
The San Diegans were handcuffed by an early start time in San Jose. Goaltender Oscar Dansk stopped 32 shots but for the third consecutive game the offense did not make an appearance on the scoresheet.
“We got our backs against the wall in a playoff push right now and every opportunity is here for us (in the San Jose game) to show up and be great early … We weren’t,” San Diego head coach Matt McIlvane assessed. “Getting down 2-0 in the first period is deserved. Felt like we got better in the second, but it wasn’t enough. We had trouble scoring at the end, but the connectedness, suffocating team defense that we’ve been playing with wasn’t apparent in this game, so we lost 4-0.
“When there’s a b it of a new group together, line have shifted, guys have moved up and around, you got to find chemistry with the new guys. But also, most of the time, the answer is simplicity to get yourself out of it. It’s crowding the net. It’s volume, It’s rebounds. It’s something that goes in off a leg and then things break, and guys loosen up a little bit. You got to really compete to score and fight for opportunities.”
“We know we got to be better moving forward because points are at a premium for us right now,” San Diego right wing Judd Caulfield acknowledged.
The Gulls seemed to get all the bounces go their way in the weekend opener in Nevada as Nico Myatovic registered his first career two-goal night, Tristan Luneau tallied his team-leading 12th multi-point game of the season, newly-acquired Carsen Twarynski scored his first goal as a Gull, Yegor Sidorov collected his 16th assist of the season to bring his rookie season total to 31 points, Roland McKeown added to his career-best single-season point total with his 21st assist, Ville Husso recorded a 28-save shutout and Caulfield scored into an empty net.
“We weren’t proud of our game (in San Jose), and we knew we needed to respond, and the guys were excellent for large parts of the game,” McIlvane said.
The Gulls went seven-for-seven on the penalty kill. The game marked the AHL debut for Stian Solberg (Anaheim’s first-round pick in the 2024 draft) and Ian Moore (third-round pick by the Ducks in the 2020 draft).
“Calm puck movement — I think that they both advanced the game for us on a regular basis,” McIlvane noted. “You jump kin a new team, new coach, new league. It’s all this stuff, so you’re trying to get used to it, but both were able to show a lot of what they can do right away. There’s no question they help us.”
The Gulls could not replicate those results in the series finale despite Luneau contributing his second consecutive two-assist performance, Twearynski’s second power play goal in as many games, Sidorov registering his 16th goal of the season to give him points in back-to-back constests, Coulson Pitre collecting his 12th assist of the season and his second game in a row and Solberg netting his first career AHL point on an assist on Twarnyski’s goal.
Dansk stopped 23 shots. Luneau’s 46 points (six goals, 40 assists) top all San Diego skaters and ranks second among active AHL defensemen. His 46 points rank second all-time in Gulls franchise history, trailing only Brandon Montour’s 57 points in 2015-16. Luneau is only the second Gull to notch 40 assists in a season (Montour in 2015-16). Luneau’s 40 assists rank second in the league and tops among rookies.
“For any team that’s second to last, you never know what you’re going to get,” Twarynski said. “These guys, to me, have been acting like they’re in the top three in terms of how they are in the locker room, and our mindset every game. We’re looking forward to this last stretch here, there’s still opportunity.”
One down, three to go
The Gulls got off on the right foot with Wednesday’s 4-3 overtime win over San Jose. The Gulls trailed 2-1 early in the must-win contest before taking a 3-2 lead through two periods. The Cuda also is vying to move up the division standings and the Bay Area visitors got a big goal in the third period to tie the game and send it into a sudden-victory period.
Lucas Vanroyboys notched his 10th goal of the season at 6:12 of the opening period to put San Jose on top. The Gulls countered late in the period as Roland McKenzie scored his 12th goal of the season at 16:06 to knot the score 1-all.
The Barracuda took a 2-1 lead at 3:49 of the second period courtesy of Ethan Cardwell’s 11th tally of the season. The Gulls had other designs, however, by netting back-to-back goals from Ryan Carpenter (his 19th) and Jan Mysak (his 17th) to close out the period with a one-goal lead.
Former Gull Pavol Regenda scored on a power play at 15:01 of the third period to bedevil his former team. San Jose out-shot San Diego 13-7 in the final regulation period (24-15 over the final two periods) but the game remained tied.
The Gulls scored on their only shot in the five-minute overtime period as Twarynski ended the game in favor of the hosts at the 2:29 mark off passes from Yegor Sidorov and newcomer Solberg. The goal weas Twarynksi’s fifth of the season while the assist was Sidorov’s 17th.
The Gulls swept the three-star selection in front of 5,002 fans: Twarynski (game-winning goal) as the No. 1 star, McKeown as the No. 2 star with one goal and one assist and Ian Moore as the No. 3 star with two assists.
The Gulls didn’t necessarily get what they wanted on the out-of-town scoreboard as Tucson blankerd host Ontario, 3-0, and Bakersfield fell, 3-2, in overtime to visiting Colorado. The Gulls remain seven points behind the Roadrunners and did gain one standing point on Bakersfield, now four points behind the eighth place Condors.
The Gulls host Tucson in a wild west showdown on Friday, then meet Calgary on home ice in a pair of games that could have big implications on how the playoff race turns out.
