SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Tucson Roadrunners surrendered three goals in the third period Saturday night, falling to the San Jose Barracuda 6-3 in the second game of the teams’ American Hockey League playoff series at SAP Center.
Barracuda forward Rudolfs Balcers — who finished with two goals and two assists — scored his second goal of the contest 3:45 into the third period to snap a 3-3 tie. The night was downhill from there for the Roadrunners, who head back to Tucson with a split of the first two games of their first-round, best-of-five Calder Cup series against San Jose.
“After one (win), you want to get two,” Roadrunners coach Mike Van Ryn said. “But we haven’t played great by any means. It all comes down to execution, and they’ve executed better than we have.”
Van Ryn said his players have had some trouble keeping their emotions in check. That may be due to lack of experience, given this is the Roadrunners’ first-ever AHL playoff appearance.
“When we did what we wanted to do, we were good,” Van Ryn said. “When we got away from our game plan and got emotional, we weren’t. Part of being in the playoffs is being able to keep your emotions under control and sticking to the game plan, and we haven’t done our best at doing that.”
Tucson got two early goals from Dylan Strome in the first period, but scored just once more the rest of the way. Those goals came roughly two minutes apart: After San Jose opened the scoring on a goal by Balcers just 1:25 into the contest, Strome fired the puck into the left side of the net roughly three minutes later to knot the score at 1-1.
Strome scored again at the 6:16 mark, giving Tucson a one-goal advantage.
“Obviously, it was kind of our fault that they scored the first one,” Strome said. “We wanted to get that one back.
“The second goal came on a draw play off the faceoff. It wasn’t what we drew up, but it worked out.”
The lead was short-lived, though: San Jose’s Adam Helekwa scored on a power play and Chartier tallied later in the first period to put the Barracuda ahead 3-2 entering the second.
Mario Kempe’s goal in the second period tied the score at 3-3, but the Roadrunners proved unable to find the net in the third.
San Jose never trailed after Balcers’ second tally. The Barracuda added an insurance goal by Manuel Wiederer with four minutes to play, and Rourke Chartier swatted home his second goal of the contest, an empty-netter in the final minutes, to seal the win.
San Jose outshot Tucson 14-7 in the first period, and the Roadrunners managed just one shot through the first seven minutes of the second period. That shot had some stardust on it, though: Kempe flipped the puck past Barracuda goalie Antoine Bibeau at the 6:44 mark for the tie.
That remained the score entering the third period.
