Gulls Ready to Rebound in Tucson
Dec 18, 2024By Nick Aguilera/SanDiegoGulls.com
After a 2-0 loss to open their four-game road trip, the San Diego Gulls are looking to get back to their winning ways tonight against the Tucson Roadrunners at Tucson Convention Center Arena.
Even with the loss on Monday, San Diego has earned points in five of the last six games (4-1-0-1). With embers of their hot streak still smoldering, the Gulls will look to reignite that fire tonight.
"The nice thing about this league is that you get an opportunity right away," assistant coach Kris Sparre said following Monday’s game. "We’re a group that responds, we’ve done that all season. If we’re down in a period, we’ve seen amazing comebacks in the third periods of games. I know that this group won’t take this lightly. They’re not happy with how they played [Monday], we’ll be ready to respond [tonight]."
"I think we if we could play again right now, we would," right wing Sasha Pastujov added. "We're really excited to play them again and put our best foot forward."
The Gulls have seen the Roadrunners four times already this season, with San Diego only grabbing one win in the first half of the season set. Roadrunners goaltender Matthew Villalta has been a thorn in the Gulls’ side, as he has recorded two of his three shutouts this season against San Diego.
Despite being stoned in net again, San Diego isn’t letting that waver its confidence heading into tonight’s contest.
"We’ve done a lot of good things as of late, so we don’t want to forget that our team’s in a good way,” Sparre said. “When we play the brand of hockey we want to play we’ll give ourselves a chance to win most nights. [Monday], we didn’t bring that same tenacity that we’ve seen these last few weeks."
Following tonight’s game, the Gulls will head to Colorado to face the Eagles for the first time in 2024-25 starting with a 6 p.m. contest on Friday at Blue Arena.