Gulls Biweekly Report 4

Photo: SD Gulls

By Thomas Harrington

The San Diego Gulls played four games over the past two weeks and had a record of 2-1-1, their most successful two week stretch of the season so far. With both Sam Colangelo and Jansen Harkins in Anaheim, offense has been hard to come by for this team, but there are some players who have been stepping up.

The Gulls started out by hosting the Tucson Roadrunners. Tucson scored early in the first and neither team scored in the second. The Roadrunners scored twice in the third and shut out the Gulls 3-0. San Diego then traveled to San Jose to face the Barracuda. San Jose scored in the first, and Roland McKeown tied the game in the second. Neither team scored in the third period or overtime, and the game went to a shootout. Nikita Nesterenko scored on the Gulls’ first attempt, but San Jose answered on their third. After that, neither team found the back of the net again until Nathan Gaucher scored in the 12th round of the shootout to give the Gulls a 2-1 win.

The Gulls then returned home to host the Condors. Bakersfield opened the scoring in the first, but Sasha Pastuov tied the game in the second. Late in the second and early in the third, Bakersfield scored twice to take a 3-1 lead. However, as has been the case many times this season, the Gulls didn’t give up. Their comeback started with Yegor Sidorov and McKeown scoring less than 30 seconds apart to tie the game. Coulson Pitre then scored his first career goal. Judd Caulfield scored his first of the season into an empty net, and the Gulls won 5-3. The Reign then visited San Diego. Sidorov scored in his second straight game to give the Gulls a lead in the first period. Neither team scored in the second and Ontario tied the game early in the third. The game went to overtime and then a shootout, where all three San Diego shooters were stopped and Ontario won 2-1.

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The Gulls will play six games over the next two weeks. Their four game homestand will come to an end when they host Henderson and then San Jose. The Gulls will then hit the road for two games in Tucson, followed by two games in Colorado.

Harkins and Colangelo still lead San Diego in points, but Pastujov has scored three goals in seven games since being recalled from the ECHL. He’s a longshot to get called up, but if he gets hot, there’s a chance. Sidorov went through a scoring slump but with goals in back to back games, he’s starting to heat up and is another young player with an outside chance at getting called up. On the backend, the Ducks probably won’t need to call up anyone with the recent acquisition of Jacob Trouba, but if they do, it will probably be Tyson Hinds who gets another shot. He hasn’t played in the NHL yet, but has been called up a couple times this season to get some practice with the Ducks.

Hopefully this two week stretch is a sign of things to come for the Gulls. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but if they can start climbing their way back to having a .500 record, they still have a chance at making the Calder Cup Playoffs. San Diego, and most of the rest of the AHL, still have over 50 games to play this year, so there’s still time to turn things around, but the Gulls cannot afford to fall further behind in the playoff race.

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December 10th, 2024