Gulls Aim For Series Sweep Against Roadrunners

Apr 10, 2021

The San Diego Gulls will look to sweep a back-to-back series against the Tucson Roadrunners tonight at Tucson Convention Center Arena (7 p.m. PT; TV: AHL TV; RADIO: Gulls Audio Network). San Diego brings a four-game road win streak into the contest and look to grab its ninth win in the last 10 games (8-1-0-0).

Tonight marks the sixth meeting between the two Pacific Division rivals. After dropping the first two contests of an eight-game season series, the Gulls rebounded to win four straight, including a wild 8-6 victory in the series opener last night.

Andrew Agozzino (2-1=3), Jacob Perreault (0-3=3) and Brendan Guhle (2-1=3) led the charge offensively as the Gulls tied a club record for the most goals scored on the road. Six players finished with multi-point performances San Diego also pushed their American Hockey League-leading goal total to 96.

“I thought our rush game was good, our D were involved in the offense,” head coach Kevin Dineen said following the win. “We put pucks towards the net and added bodies there. That’s an effective way for us to play, when we do that, it tends to lead to positive things.”

The team’s transition game played a large part in its success, as the team scored four of its goals on odd-man rushes.

“Well that always starts with your defensive play and the transition game is always key,” Dineen explained. “You take care of business in your zone and then you have to get your feet moving. They do a good job of back pressuring the puck so I thought we had some good tempo to our rush game.”

Guhle’s two-goal performance set a new career high, while the defenseman also tied a career best with his three-point night. The defenseman, who entered the game without a goal this season, feels the results could help kickstart his offensive contributions.

“Yeah that was nice,” he said following the win. “No shortage of chances, but finally got a couple to go in tonight. Keep building on that and hopefully keep getting some more.”

The Gulls – who enjoyed a five-goal cushion early in the third period – allowed Tucson to close the gap to two late in regulation. It’s a pattern the team wants to avoid copying in tonight’s matchup.

“I think tonight we got a little too ahead of ourselves,” Guhle explained. “We got to keep the same game. We got to keep getting pucks in deep at the red line. Stay out of the box. We gave them every opportunity to come back, so that’s on us. We can’t get into that habit of we get up big on teams and everyone’s going to try more plays than they normally do or not keeping it simple. If we keep playing our game and playing it hard and getting pucks in deep, then we should be to hold those leads a lot stronger.”

Discipline will play a major factor. San Diego faced a five-minute major penalty to close regulation and handed Tucson a 6-on-3 advantage on a delay of game penalty with 42 seconds remaining in the game.

“It’s very obvious; it’s a simple game,” Dineen said. “There’s five minutes left, we take the puck the wrong way and we take penalties so a very young mistake there. There are ways you play the game and we’ve all been around it for a while. There’s some lessons in there, but a very undisciplined finish for us.”