The Tucson Roadrunners’ players, coaches and essential staff boarded a charter bus in the Tucson Arena parking lot Wednesday with roughly 415 miles and 6 1/2 hours of road ahead of them.
Destination: Vegas, baby, with most of the mileage coming via Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 93.
This week marked the Roadrunners’ first visit to Southern Nevada, where they’re currently in the middle of a three-game set against the first-place Henderson Silver Knights.
Henderson won the first matchup in overtime Thursday, 2-1. The teams will skate again Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Orleans Arena, just off the Las Vegas strip.
The Silver Knights, formerly the San Antonio Rampage, moved to the Las Vegas area this offseason and rebranded as the AHL sibling of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights.
Henderson marks the 16th different opponent Tucson has played on the road since the Roadrunners’ inception.
The furthest east: Charlotte. The furthest north: Tucson’s only trip beyond the U.S.-Canadian border, to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Both were in the Roadrunners’ inaugural season of 2016-17.
This year, with AHL schedules more or less regional, all but two of Tucson’s road trips will come by bus instead of airplane. The exceptions: a three-game set earlier in the season to Loveland, Colorado — home of the Colorado Eagles, just south of Fort Collins and about an hour north of Denver — and another three games May 6-9 at the Texas Stars, who play in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park.
The Silver Knights will christen a brand-new arena, the Dollar Loan Center, in the Henderson suburb of Las Vegas ahead of the 2022-23 season.
That makes the Silver Knights’ the closest geographical matchup to the Roadrunners this season. That will likely change next season, when the San Diego Gulls — who are spending the pandemic-shortened 2021 campaign about an hour north in Irvine — move back to their home building at the end of Interstate 8. Door-to-door, Tucson Arena to Pechanga Arena, situated near San Diego’s Mission Bay: 409 miles, or six shorter than to Orleans Arena.
When Henderson’s new arena opens in fall of 2022, it will be four miles closer than San Diego to the Roadrunners’ home building. But that same season, the to-be-named AHL affiliate of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, set to debut themselves this fall, will open a new building in Palm Desert, making that Tucson’s newest, closest geographical rival. Door-to-door, Tucson Arena to the new Palm Desert rink, to be located off I-10 in Southern California’s Coachella Valley, will be 369 miles.
Newcomer Neuber a big hit
Kyle Neuber didn’t officially get credit for an assist on the late first-period goal in the Roadrunners’ eventual 4-1 home win last Saturday over the Gulls.
But Tucson coach Steve Potvin most certainly recognized Neuber’s presence as a leading factor toward the Roadrunners setting a physical tone early and going up 2-0 in the opening frame. That was the first time in five games Tucson had a lead after the first period.
Before Friday, Neuber, 32, who was signed to a professional tryout by the Roadrunners on April 7, hadn’t been in an AHL lineup in nine seasons. Over that time, he moved between the Double-A ECHL, the Canadian college hockey circuit, and even a season in Australia.
But during the first period Saturday, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound right wing threw his weight around with multiple tone-setting checks. With three minutes to go in the first, Neuber goated San Diego’s Jamie Devane into dropping the gloves. Neuber and Devane went to the box each for five minutes, but Devane was also tagged with a two-minute minor for instigating.
Tucson forward Mike Carcone would score on the power play barely a minute later, and the Roadrunners never looked back.
“It was great to see Kyle come out and help our team. Two big hits, and I think they felt the effect of that. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen that here in Tucson,” Potvin said. “We’ve never had a player that could, you know, fight and utilize his body the way he did in the first period. It gave us a little bit of confidence and honestly gave us a little bit more time and space.
“The ability to wear teams down is difficult when you’re constantly getting cross-checks to the back, or being punched when you’re not looking,” Potvin added. “But a lot of times (an opponent will) hold back if they know somebody’s on your bench who can take care of the boys and take care of himself.”
LaCouvee notches assist
Last Friday’s 8-6 Roadrunners’ loss to San Diego marked the first time since November 2019 that a Roadrunners’ goaltender has earned an assist.
Starting goaltender Connor LaCouvee, was credited with an assist on defenseman Kyle Capobianco’s power-play goal less than a minute into the second period.
San Diego had just cleared the puck while killing a two-minute minor. LaCouvee gathered it behind his own net and cleanly handed it off to Capobianco, who started up ice. After nearly losing the puck at his own blueline, Capobianco regrouped, and got it to Tucson forward Kevin Roy.
The two skated into the Gulls’ zone and passed it back and forth to each other, before Capobianco’s blast made the game 5-3. Because LaCouvee, Capobianco and Roy were the only three to touch the puck on the exchange, the goaltender playing in his 28th career AHL game registered his first-ever point.
Adin Hill and Ivan Prosvetov, currently 1-2 with the Coyotes at the NHL level, each had an assist in the early part of the 2019-20 season. Both came on empty net goals, where a longer shot attempt is more likely to take place, meaning fewer passes between the goaltender and goal-scorer touching the puck.
