Few teams over the past five weeks have played the Bakersfield Condors as tight as the Tucson Roadrunners did Saturday night.
But just like all others who gave it a go, all the Roadrunners got for their efforts was another “L,” while the Condors won their 16th consecutive game, dating back to Jan. 12.
“Yeah, getting close isn’t fun. You play the game to win, and we didn’t win” said Tucson head coach Jay Varady, whose Roadrunners fell 2-0, thanks in part to a 30-save shutout by Bakersfield goaltender Shane Starrett.
Goaltending on both sides stole the show, with Tucson’s Adin Hill stopping 29 of the 30 shots he faced while starting for the 12th time in Tucson last 14 games. Starrett and Hill were announced postgame as the evening’s first and second stars, respectively.
“It’s tough when you lose a game like that,” said Hill. “We played a good strong game … our desperation was there.”
Bakersfield struck first less than five minutes into the game when Joe Gambardella, on a power play behind Hill’s net, fed Kailer Yamamoto on a one-timer. The game would stay that way until the Condors added an empty net goal with just six seconds to play despite a flurry of bodies flying and scoring opportunities for Tucson in the game’s waning moments.
The Roadrunners’ best chance came when the puck did actually get past Starrett. Less than four minutes after Bakersfield opened it up, the puck deflected off the lower body of a charging Jens Looke and into the net for Tucson. But it was immediately waved off when the official appeared to signal that Looke made an illegal motion, such as kicking, toward the puck. After replay review, the call on the ice stood, and that’s as close as the Roadrunners would get.
“Everything went so fast there. I don’t know, I didn’t feel like I was kicking it. But I think it’s really hard for a ref to see everything going so fast. It’s tough,” Looke said. “We still need to find other ways to score goals, because we’re struggling with that right now.”
Added Varady: “You’ve got to score a goal to get a point in a hockey game. … If we’re struggling to score goals, we’ve got to find a way that one bounces in off of us every once in a while.”
While the Condors (32-15-2-1) remain the American Hockey League’s hottest team — if only by a hair — it’s the Roadrunners (25-17-4-2) who are on the opposite side of that coin.
After sweeping a pair from the Texas Stars on Jan. 21 and Jan. 23 at Tucson Arena, the Roadrunners are 2-7-1-1 in their last 11 games. Only the Springfield Thunderbirds are riding a similar current streak, at 2-9-0-1 over their last dozen outings.
Bakersfield inexplicably remains one of three current AHL teams riding streaks of at least 15 games without a regulation loss. While the Condors are the only one to not lose in any fashion, the Belleville Senators (11-0-0-4) and the Hershey Bears (16-0-0-1), both in the AHL’s Eastern Conference, have been near perfect in their own rights for more than a month.
Starrett said the Condors know that from this point forward, they’re going to get every opponent’s best effort. But he also said that despite any adjustments or video work or keys other teams may try to find on Bakersfield at this point, the Condors are putting in work of their own.
“We’re doing the same thing. We’re going to obviously go into film and obviously do the things we can tweak better, and coming out Monday, we know they’re going to have a pushback, being the second game at home against us. We know teams are preparing for us, but we’re preparing the same for them.”
Tucson remains in fourth place in the AHL’s Pacific Division, while Bakersfield is still atop both the division and Western Conference standings. The Roadrunners’ next chance to try to stop the Condors’ now 16-game streak comes Monday at 7:05 p.m. at Tucson Arena.
