Sure, a few of the Tucson Roadrunner players joked early on this season about being ready to face an opponent or two other than San Diego Gulls.
Occasionally on the road by bus, sometimes via airplane, and often enough at home, the Roadrunners faced their Interstate 8 rivals the final three games of last season, while already going head to head four times early on in 2018-19.
Then again, maybe playing the Gulls again and again — and again — isn’t such a terribly thing after all.
A defensive showcase early on turned into a 6-3 Tucson win Wednesday night at Tucson Arena — the seventh straight time the Roadrunners (7-3-0-1) have bested the Gulls (3-4-1-1).
“I think we played good 90 percent of the game. We let them in a little bit in the end there,” said forward Mario Kempe, announced post-game as the night’s first star after scoring the game’s first goal, and an insurance one late in the third. “Obviously they had to make a push. We were up 3-0, so they had to cheat a little more, take a little bit more risk. It opened up a little bit in the back, too, but we solved it.”
After a scoreless first, Kempe jump-started things for Tucson with his first goal of the night about three minutes into the middle frame. The game would stay 1-0 until late in the second when Tucson scored twice more — first by Brayden Burke and then David Ullstrom — just 27 seconds apart with close to three minutes to play before the second intermission.
Tucson enjoyed leads of 3-0 and 4-1 in the third, the latter off the stick of Conor Garland, before San Diego scored twice inside six minutes left to cut the lead to 4-3. But just 13 seconds after the Gulls tightened the deficit to one, Kempe broke San Diego’s back with his second of the night, with 2:52 on the clock. Trevor Murphy would add an empty netter not long after.
Merrick Madsen, the pro hockey rookie who backstopped Harvard to an NCAA Frozen Four appearance in 2017, made his first career American Hockey League start in net for Tucson. It was the first time in 99 Roadrunners games that a goaltender not named Adin Hill or Hunter Miska was in goal. Madsen has been with the Roadrunners for the last two weeks while Hill nurses a lower body injury, and got the nod Wednesday after Miska’s emergency call-up to the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes with Coyotes’ starter Antii Raanta on the shelf with a lower body injury.
Entering the third period, Madsen didn’t just look in line for his first win in his first AHL start, but had a shutout going, despite facing just nine shots through two frames.
San Diego turned up the juice in the third, however, peppering Madsen 13 more times as the score tightened.
“I was kind of surprised that there wasn’t any (jitters),” admitted Madsen, named the game’s third star. “You’ve got to find ways to stay with the game especially as a goalie in that situation. I only had a handful of shots between the first and second period. Sometimes it’s just going to happen like that, and you’ve got to find ways as a goalie to battle through that. And even as a team, when you finally do have pressure from the other team — because it’s going to happen — to have some defense and be ready to go.”
Tucson is at home for two more games this weekend, hosting the San Jose Barracuda Friday and Saturday night — both at 7:05 p.m. at the Tucson Arena.
