And with their next trick — a hat trick, that is — the Tucson Roadrunners once again put on quite the showing of late-game heroics in front of their home audience.
The Roadrunners didn’t quite have enough to come away with the win, falling 4-3 in a shootout to the visiting Colorado Eagles on Friday night.
But a late-third-period comeback as part of forward Nick Merkley’s first professional hat trick was enough to get the Roadrunners (30-23-5-3) a point in the standings and keep Tucson still somewhat in arm’s length of the same Eagles (34-24-4-1) they’ll face again Saturday at Tucson Arena at 7:05 p.m.
For the third straight home game, the Roadrunners managed to pick up their points in the standings thanks to goals in the waning moments of regulation or overtime.
Last Saturday, it was Lane Pederson culminating his first career pro hat trick with the game-winner a minute into overtime against San Jose; the next night: Michael Bunting scored inside 10 seconds to go in regulation to steal another one from the Barracuda.
And this time, on Friday: Merkley scored his first goal barely two minutes into the game before adding two more scores in the last half of the third period. That erased a 3-1 lead to propel the Roadrunners to overtime. Like Pederson a week earlier, Merkley scored all three Tucson goals.
“It felt pretty good. We needed two (points) tonight, so it’s tough to be happy with that,” Merkley said. “We showed some character there in the third. But we’ve got to win those.”
Tucson is now 5-1-0-1 in their last seven games, slicing an 11-point deficit to Colorado in the race for the fourth and final playoff berth out of the American Hockey League’s Pacific Division to just four points before Friday night’s shootout loss; the Roadrunners now enter Saturday’s matchup down five points, with seven games to play. The Eagles have just five games remaining.
That 3-1 third period lead for the Eagles came thanks to a pair by Colorado’s Michael Joly, and an oddball of a goal by Dominic Toninato right before the close of the second period.
With the score tied at one and less than 30 seconds to go in the middle frame, the Roadrunners power play unit played their customary game of keep-away with the Eagles inside the Colorado zone.
At the 21-second mark, Roadrunners defenseman Robbie Russo received the puck on the left point, wound up, and fired a slapper — but his stick shattered on impact.
The stick blade flew toward the far-side boards, while the puck trickled toward the slot in front of Eagles’ goaltender Pavel Francouz.
There, Colorado’s Logan O’Connor rifled it to teammate Dominic Toninato who was breaking out of the zone in a full sprint, blowing past the stick-less Russo and skating in on Tucson goaltender Adin Hill.
He beat Hill with 13 seconds left in the period for the 2-1 lead.
“It’s bad luck, you know. A situation like that happens, you brush it aside and you go back to work. You can’t change that,” Tucson coach Jay Varady said of the sequence.
“We can’t control a stick breaking. … (We) rebound. Get back at it, and I thought we did a better job in the third.”
After the comeback and a fruitless overtime period — despite Merkley coming ever-so-close to scoring a fourth goal in the extra frame — Merkley, Jordan Gross and Pederson all missed their shootout attempts. Colorado missed its first two in the shootout, before Scott Kosmachuk beat Hill to end the game.
Hill stopped 30 of 33 shots in regulation and overtime for the Roadrunners, while also being credited with assists on Merkley’s second and third goals.
