The San Diego Gulls trailed by at least four goals at some point in each of their first three games of the 2021-22 season — all losses.
But the Tucson Roadrunners’ most natural American Hockey League rival flipped that script Friday, with their Southern Arizona foes on the receiving end of a 5-1 San Diego rout in Tucson Arena. The Gulls are gone from the guild of the winless, while Tucson has now lost three of its last four — it’s only two wins on the season coming via 1-0 and 4-0 shutouts during the season’s first two weekends.
The Roadrunners (2-3-0-0) led for all of 1:40 after rookie Liam Kirk earned his second goal of the year just shy of nine minutes into the first period. The power play goal was assisted by fellow rookie Matias Maccelli, who is one of five Tucson skaters with three points to lead the Roadrunners through five games. Defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok carded the secondary assist.
The Gulls (1-3-0-0) quickly countered of the stick of Alex Limoges. That was the first of five straight San Diego goals, with second-period scores from Jack Badini and Limoges, and third-period markers by Sam Carrick and Jacob Perreault to pull away and then some.
“We just we needed to play better. We needed to find a way,” Tucson head coach Jay Varady said. “You know, and there were periods of that third, where we played okay, but that's not good enough. It's not good enough to play parts of games, parts of periods. You have to play the whole game, the whole period.”
Added Kirk: “Tonight's performance, I think that's just on all of us players. I think we’ve just got to be better.
“You can tell in the room that we all know that we can be a lot better and we can perform a lot better,” Kirk said. “So I you know, we need to get rested and then come tomorrow with a different attitude and mindset and make sure that the results are completely different all the way around.”
While the Roadrunners’ defense has shown flashes of brilliance this season — specifically those aforementioned shutouts — Friday’s result only added to lingering questions about where Tucson might find its goal-scoring output this season.
The Roadrunners' 11 goals through five games (2.2 goals per game) is a bottom-five number league-wide after Friday’s outing, with five of those 11 coming from either Kirk or fellow rookie Ben McCartney — both seventh-round NHL draft picks by the Arizona Coyotes in recent years.
“(Kirk has) been able to contribute on the power play, he hit a post there late in the game,” Varady said of the positive of Kirk, for one, coming on strong out of the gates. “There’s some good plays coming off his stick in those situations.”
Josef Kořenář made his second start of the season for Tucson. Kořenář is the team’s current No. 1 netminder after Ivan Prosvetov was called up to the NHL’s Coyotes earlier this week. Kořenář stopped 28 of 33 San Diego shots on net. Lukas Dostal’s only blemish in goal for the Gulls was Kirk’s early power-play goal. Dostal stopped 24 of 25 from Tucson.
These same teams, which battle each year for the “Interstate 8 Border Rivalry Trophy,” face off again Saturday at 7 p.m. in Tucson Arena.
The trophy has been in Tucson for four seasons now, with Saturday’s game the second of eight matchups between the clubs this season.
San Diego won the season series the first year the teams played (10-2-0-0), but Tucson has held on to the trophy since. That came by way besting San Diego 7-4-0-1 in 2017-18, then 6-2-0-0 in 2018-19. The last two seasons, (2019-20 and 2020-21), the teams tied 4-4-0-0, meaning the trophy stuck around the Roadrunners’ downtown offices by default.
