PREVIEW: Gulls, Barracuda Meet On Winter Wonderland Night

Dec 18, 2021

By Paige Burnell/SanDiegoGulls.com

It’s Winter Wonderland Night for the San Diego Gulls as the team looks to bury Friday’s nights 5-1 loss to Bakersfield in the snow and sled on into tonight’s matchup against the San Jose Barracuda at Pechanga Arena San Diego (7 p.m. PT; TV: Fox 5 San Diego; RADIO: Gulls Audio Network).

“Having two games in two days you’ve got to forget about these ones and kind of flip the page and get on to the next game and start focusing on that,” Gulls right wing Sean Josling said. 

Despite last night’s result, Josling provided a bright spot as the rookie scored the first goal of his American Hockey League career.

San Diego is 38-18-4-1 all-time against the Barracuda with a and 20-7-2-1 at home. This season, the Gulls are 4-0-0-0 against the Barracuda after sweeping a four-game series from Nov. 19 to Nov. 26.

After two tough losses where he felt his team underperformed, Gulls head coach Joel Bouchard wants to see a more concentrated effort.

“I want to see more from everybody, obviously,” said Bouchard following last night’s loss. “I think veterans are gonna have to help out. And let’s see if they can come up with a little more muscle, a little more jam. My job is to take them out of their comfort zone, to push them, but they’re the ones that hold the stick and have the jersey and have a career in front of them. They have a chance to be a professional hockey player. Things change in a hurry. Again, they’ve been good. They’ve been good guys. I’ve been pushing them, taking them out of their comfort zone. I’ve said it before, a lot of them are drinking from a firehose, but tonight they were boys and I’m looking for more men tomorrow.”

Multiple Gulls produced some of their best performances in November’s games against the Barracuda. 

Nikolas Brouillard tallied 2-4=6 in that four-game series while Brayden Tracey collected 3-2=5 points. Additionally, Hunter Drew had three assists (0-3=3) in back-to-back games. 

Bouchard hopes to see his team take a similar step forward tonight.

“Now let’s see how we do the next two games before the break, but they gotta be hard,” he said about his expectations for tonight’s matchup. “Because now, you know, teams that are mature are getting their wins together and I thought we did really well for first 20 games in some way. We climbed on, we growed together, but now the dig of the season is starting, and our guys were overwhelmed, overmatched and it was a really good wakeup call for them.”

San Diego steadily improved on the penalty kill and enters tonight fifth in AHL with an 87.8% kill rate on home ice. It faces a tough test in San Jose, who enters with the league’s second-ranked power play. 

San Jose is coming off its own loss, a 7-4 setback last night against the Ontario Reign. Scott Reedy collected a power play goal and enters tonight leading the AHL with seven man-advantage tallies.

Reedy is also first among rookies with 12 goals this season and ranks third among first-year skaters with 12-9=21 points overall. 

San Jose’s special teams struggle on the road, entering tonight last in road penalty kill and a bottom-five power-play unit away from SAP Center.