With the Tucson Roadrunners still knee-deep in what’s become the club’s murkiest stretch of the season, the answer on how to get out of the muck — if asking the team’s players, at least — sounds rather simple.
“Obviously, get pucks in the net,” Roadrunners forward Michael Bunting explains, matter-of-fact. “That’s what we need to do.”
With the Roadrunners (25-20-5-2) mired in a fog that has seen them go 2-9-2-1 over their last 14 games and plummet accordingly in the American Hockey League’s Pacific Division standings, Bunting and some of his teammates agree that it’s not the defense that needs work; the Roadrunners’ blue-line play and goaltending has been more than solid the last month of the season.
And they don’t dispute that special teams of late have been on the rise and the way the team competes has kept Tucson in close games — to the tune of just one of their last 10 losses coming by more than two goals.
Really, Bunting said, it’s that simple-in-concept but harder-in-actuality idea that scoring just a few more goals here and there will be the difference between Tucson being a playoff team a month from now or the season ending earlier than most around the organization would have predicted even a couple short weeks ago.
“There is no magic key. It’s just the bounces. You can get five breakaways and miss all of them, but all of a sudden you shoot from the corner and it goes in. That’s just the way hockey is,” Bunting explained of a recent string where, despite playing teams tough, Tucson has scored more than two goals just once in its last seven outings.
“We just need to get that one lucky bounce — get the hockey gods on our side with one fluky goal — and I think that will just open the floodgates for us.”
Tucson’s next chance to turn that tide: This weekend against the Ontario Reign for 7:05 p.m. faceoffs Friday and Saturday.
Ontario isn’t just last in the Pacific Division, but has the worst record in the entire 31-team AHL this season.
And if two against the Reign (19-26-5-2) isn’t the elixir, after that it’s two next week in Stockton against a Heat team that’s enters this weekend with the AHL’s fourth-worst record.
In other words: the time is now to climb back up, defenseman Dysin Mayo said.
“We’re getting good chances,” Mayo added, “we just need to find a way to capitalize on them. I mean, last weekend against Colorado we had tons of opportunities to score, but we just couldn’t put it in. I think we had almost 50 shots the first game.”
It was 45, to be precise, in a 3-2 overtime loss — one of five straight defeats for the Roadrunners, despite earning a point by taking it past regulation.
“We’ve been playing pretty good. Nine times out of 10 we win in Colorado in that overtime game. We were all over them. That was just unfortunate,” Bunting said.
Bunting and Mayo, along with a handful of their teammates, have lived through this before. Into the second half of the 2016-17 season — the club’s inaugural campaign in Tucson — the Roadrunners were still above. 500 and competitive in the Pacific Division. But Tucson fell off in a hurry over the season’s final weeks, ending up in sixth place and 11 points out of a playoff spot.
This season, Tucson entered the second half of its schedule with the third best record in the AHL. Today the Roadrunners are 17th, and three points behind the Colorado Eagles for the fourth and final playoff spot in their division.
“It’s not like we’re far behind. We have two games in hand on Colorado, and if we win these this weekend, we’re right back in it. It’s crazy how tight it is,” Bunting said, noting that Tucson has 16 games left, while the Eagles have just 14 remaining.
“I think we’ve been keeping a good head about it. No one’s freaking out.”
But that’s not to say there isn’t a sense of urgency. Seeing the remaining games on the schedule dwindled — Tucson plays eight of the next 10 at home, then four of the final six on the road — isn’t lost on the Roadrunners.
“Obviously it’s in the back of our heads. This is playoff hockey now,” Bunting said.
Mayo said that a little pressure might just be a good thing.
“Last year we were in first place the whole time, so we were kind of comfortable out there. Now, this is kind of a different scenario. We’ve got a lot of new guys this year, so it’s a good experience for the younger guys to learn how to stick with it and be a pro.”
