Whatever “it” is, on some nights you really just don’t have it.
The Tucson Roadrunners as a team certainly did not Tuesday night, falling 8-2 to the Stockton Heat at the Tucson Arena. It was tied for the most goals ever given up by a Roadrunners team since the franchise moved to Tucson before the 2016-17 season, and the largest margin of defeat in either of the last two seasons.
“That leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” Tucson coach Jay Varady said. “A game like that … you want to get back and you want to get to work.”
Added forward Michael Bunting: “It’s ideal that we’re playing (Wednesday) and we can just put this behind us and get a win. … We can’t say this never happened, but we can move on.”
The Roadrunners (9-5-0-1) will get exactly the chance to do that — and rather quickly — in following up one mid-week game with another on Wednesday night. They’ll play host to Stockton (9-7-1-0) at 7:05.
Varady said a variety of problems that led to the Roadrunners’ demise. From multiple Stockton odd-man rushes, Varady noted, to being forced to kill three penalties in the first period alone — that’s when the game went from scoreless to a 3-1 Stockton lead seemingly in the snap of a finger — it didn’t help matters that Tucson’s usually-formidable goaltending unit was hardly on top of its game.
Adin Hill made his first start in more than three weeks after nursing a lower-body injury and he was tested from the get-go. But after yielding three goals on 13 shots through the majority of the first period, he was pulled with less than four minutes to go in the opening frame.
In came Merrick Madsen, the hero in net over the past two weeks. While Madsen recorded back-to-back shutouts and won his first three American Hockey League starts following Hill’s injury and an NHL call-up by Hunter Miska, he struggled Tuesday.
Madsen stopped just three of seven shots faced, giving up four goals in less than a full period of work.
Near the end of the second period, Madsen would re-take the backup goaltender’s seat positioned all alone near the northwest corner of the rink, making way for Hill to return. Hill would stop six of seven shots to close things out.
“Those guys have been our rocks all year. I think we just need to tighten up and help them out a little bit,” defenseman Kyle Capobianco said. “Tighten up gaps, close on guys quicker, and it’s an easy game for them.”
Stockton’s Alan Quine certainly did have “it,” notching a hat trick and two assists.
Tucson’s scoring came off the sticks of Bunting — his fifth of the season midway through the first period to tie the game at one, and Jens Looke’s fourth of the year. Capobianco recorded an assist on Bunting’s goal via a nifty spin move in the corner before firing a pass at the crease that Bunting would bury past Stockton goaltender Nick Schneider. Robbie Russo had the other assist on the Bunting goal, while Looke’s, at 14:42 of the third period once the game was far out of reach, was unassisted.
Varady said that while being able to jump back on the ice almost immediately — rather than an oft-typical four-or-five day layoff between games — after an outing like this is a good thing. But he doesn’t plan to sweep it under the rug entirely.
“We’re not going to forget about that. We’re going to go home, we’re going to think about it, and we’re going to come back and go to work (Wednesday),” he said.
“That’s not how we want to play hockey.”
