Ready for their own beds, a home-cooked meal or 10, and many loads of laundry, of course, the Tucson Roadrunners returned to Southern Arizona this week following an 18-day, four-city, six-game road trip that crisscrossed the American Hockey League’s Western Conference map.
And what might Tucson get for surviving one of the league’s most grueling annual road excursions with a 2-2-1-1 record? Only a date with the AHL’s hottest team — winners of a staggering 15 consecutive games — heading into this weekend.
Some reward.
The Roadrunners (25-17-4-2) are the next in an already long line of suitors to try and knock off the red-hot Bakersfield Condors (31-15-2-1), who have earned every possible point available in the standings — a full 30 points — over nearly six weeks of play.
“We don’t really look at it as stopping (Bakersfield’s) streak,” Tucson captain Dakota Mermis said Friday, following the Roadrunners’ first practice on their home ice after their now-annual temporary displacement while the Gem and Mineral Show festivities overtaking the Tucson Arena each February. “We look at it as what we can do to play well, be more consistent.”
While the Roadrunners have fallen off a bit after the mid-January AHL All-Star break — that’s when they carried the league’s third best record and were jockeying for the top spot in the AHL’s Pacific Division — Tucson still finds itself on the inside of the postseason race as the Roadrunners welcome the Condors to Tucson for 7:05 p.m. faceoffs Saturday and again Monday.
“Obviously the goal is to make the playoffs. You can’t win in the playoffs until you’re in the playoffs,” Mermis added. “The way to do that is just being consistent. The teams that make the playoffs and do well in the playoffs are consistent teams. They don’t have breakdowns very often, whether it’s game to game or shift to shift. I think consistency down the stretch here is going to either put us over the edge or knock us down.”
The top four teams from each of the AHL’s four division make the Calder Cup playoffs, and Tucson is currently fourth in the Pacific Division, trailing the third-place San Diego Gulls by six points, although the Gulls have played two more games to date. The Colorado Eagles trail the Roadrunners by four points.
But the odds likely not having Tucson end up as the top team out of both their division and the Western Conference when the 2018-19 regular season ends — that’s exactly what the Roadrunners did a year ago – forward Trevor Cheek thinks the team’s chances at competing in that playoff bracket might be better this year compared to last go-round.
“I think last year we had it a little bit easier in the regular season. We won a lot of games, and didn’t hit too many speed bumps, so I think it’s almost good in a way that we’re hitting this before the playoffs,” he said of the tight division and tough finish. “So we’ll know what it’s like. If we do the right things and do it now, we can get on a roll now before the playoffs, and continue it on into the playoffs.”
The Pacific Division houses three of the league’s top seven teams so far. That includes Bakersfield (second overall in win percentage at .663), the San Jose Barracuda (third at .660) and the San Diego Gulls (seventh at .620).
Sixteen of the Roadrunners’ final 20 regular-season games, beginning with this weekend’s pair against Bakersfield, come against Pacific Division foes. That means four against Colorado, three against the Ontario Reign, three against Bakersfield, two against San Diego, two against San Jose and two against the Stockton Heat. Tucson also plays four inter-divisional games against the Iowa Wild — two in Tucson, and two in Des Moines. Iowa has the second-best record in the Central Division.
As for being back in Tucson, “It’s like we’re back in Rockford (Illinois),” forward Lane Pederson said, making note of waking up to hours of snowfall Friday morning.
“It feels weird, but a good kind of weird.”
