While the Tucson Roadrunners did manage to exercise some of their demons last weekend — they put an end to a season-high seven-game losing streak in a situation where one more loss would have been a club-worst skid – back-to-back losses since are showing that ship is still not fully upright.
The Roadrunners, who return to Tucson Arena at 7 p.m. Friday against the Bakersfield Condors, are now 1-9 in their last 10 games. And now they have to move forward without their most potent offensive weapon. First-time All-Star Michael Carcone, the AHL’s, leading scorer so far this season, earned his second NHL recall of the year Thursday, joining the Arizona Coyotes.
As a whole, even with Carcone in the lineup, scoring is down, while goals against and penalties taken are way up. Lump it all together, and it’s a clear formula for exactly this kind of result.
While the AHL doesn’t release much publicly by way of advanced stats, a brief dive into the numbers that are available shows that it’s not just one thing that’s ailing Tucson, which, despite the aforementioned 10-game stretch, is still in sixth place in the Pacific Division. The top seven teams in the Pacific will earn postseason bids come April.
Defense
Goaltender Ivan Prosvetov earned a quick NHL recall last week, but that was almost entirely out of necessity, not because of Prosvetov’s play of late. Coyotes backup netminder Connor Ingram fell ill, sending the 6-5, fourth-year Roadrunner netminder up for barely 24 hours.
Roadrunners goalie Ivan Prosvetov works with junior hockey players during a practice session at the Tucson Convention Center. Video Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star 2022
But if Prosvetov is hoping for any sort of prolonged stay at the world’s top level, his numbers at the AHL level of late likely aren’t helping that cause.
In this 10-game stretch, Prosvetov has started six times, posting a 4.74 goals against average and an .828 save percentage. On three different occasions he’s given up five or more goals and twice seen seven get by. For the season, Prosvetov’s 3.40 goals against average and .891 save percentage are 44th and 42nd, respectively, out of AHL 51 goaltenders who qualify.
It’s not all on Prosvetov, of course. The Roadrunners are taking a ton of penalties and not scoring to the necessary degree to keep many of these games close.
That’s proven, to some degree, by similar numbers from backup Jon Gillies. While stopping a better percentage of shots against (.882), Gillies has given up 4.44 goals a game in his three starts during that stretch. David Tendeck, who got one spot start while Prosvetov was up with the Coyotes, allowed four (stopping 32 of 36 shots) in his only action.
Roadrunners goalie Jon Gillies blocks an Ontario shot in the first period of their AHL game at Tucson Convention Center on Dec. 9, 2022.
While Prosvetov’s numbers are perhaps a product of the team’s struggles, Roadrunners coach Steve Potvin has been impressed at times this season with Prosvetov’s growth, not only physically and tactically but mentally.
It’s widely known that teams prefer goaltenders have more time to develop at the AHL level than skaters. Prosvetov has 112 AHL appearances over those four years, in addition to five in the ECHL and six in the NHL.
Coyotes and Roadrunners front-office leadership suggested earlier this season they want to see a big jump out of him in 2022-23. With half the schedule left, there’s still time to show that.
Offense
It’s no secret Tucson has this season’s best individual offensive weapon in the league this season in Carcone, whose 51 points lead the AHL heading into this weekend’s action. But even before it was known Carcone would be leaving Tucson’s lineup for the Coyotes, the Roadrunners’ offense as a whole has all but disappeared at times over this recent stretch.
Giving up 5.2 goals per game, Tucson is scoring less than half that (2.3).
Perhaps the biggest culprit of late is that the Roadrunners are continuously finding themselves in holes they can’t climb out of. On Wednesday in a 5-2 loss to Henderson, the Silver Knights turned a 2-0 midgame lead to 4-0 entering the third. Trailing 1-0 after one two days earlier at Coachella Valley, the Roadrunners were down 3-0 before two minutes had gone by in the middle frame.
The worst of it came earlier this month, when Tucson faced Milwaukee at home. The Admirals were up 3-0 barely three minutes into the game. The Roadrunners chipped away but couldn’t crawl all the way back, falling 7-5.
Roadrunners forward Jean-Sebastian Dea, right, waits for a pass inside in front of Ontario forward Rasmus Kupari in the second period of their AHL game at Tucson Convention Center on Dec. 9, 2022.
Just a few weeks ago, Tucson had multiple players other than Carcone flirting with point-per-game status and the league’s top-10 list in goals. Jean-Sebastian Dea and Laurent Dauphin have combined for four goals over the last 10 games (Dauphin played in only eight), while defenseman Cam Dineen has four assists over those 10 outings.
Averaging a league-best 1.6 points per game and with 15 multipoint games this season already (including three or more points eight times), Carcone had been stifled a bit of late, too; he had only one point in each of the last three games.
The in-between
Playing from behind doesn’t necessarily mean having a deficit on the scoreboard. It can also manifest itself by how much time a team spends in 5-on-4 or 5-on-3 situations. Teams are effectively playing catchup for significant minutes each game (which can create many of those scoreboard deficits).
None of the AHL’s 32 teams has been penalized more this season than the Roadrunners. Tucson and division foe San Jose both have 734 penalty minutes, but Tucson has played fewer games. The next-closest team to Tucson and San Jose: the Syracuse Crunch, at 622 minutes.
By comparison, the same Milwaukee Admirals who just came through Southern Arizona have barely more than half as many penalty minutes (370) as Tucson in the same number of games played.
The Roadrunners’ penalty kill, still technically in the league’s bottom five at 76.8%, has been better over the last month, even as Tucson faces more shorthanded situations.
Roadrunners coaches and players have noted this season on numerous occasions that there’s something to be said for a bit of toughness, too. The Roadrunners are third in total shorthanded opportunities and more or less bunched in back with a dozen or so other teams. That translates to a significant number of those penalty minutes likely coming from skirmishes where both teams are penalized.
Making the turn
The most immediate saving grace for Tucson might come in its upcoming schedule. The Roadrunners face a Bakersfield team currently ninth out of 10 teams in the Pacific this weekend for two games in Tucson. Then, next week, it’s two midweek games in Tucson Arena against the Chicago Wolves. The Wolves are the AHL’s defending champion, but this year they’re 13-18-3-1 and in last place at the moment in the Central Division.
