Few teams had hotter starts to the 2021 American Hockey League Season than the Tucson Roadrunners and the San Diego Gulls.
But even fewer have been worse than Tucson or San Diego since.
While the Roadrunners’ four consecutive wins to open their schedule was the best such start in the team’s five-year history in Southern Arizona, San Diego’s jump was even better: 6-0 out of the gates, and keeping pace near the top of the AHL’s Pacific Division with league-leading Henderson.
Since? Dating back to Feb. 24, Tucson is 2-7-1-0; the Gulls are 2-8-0-0.
Tucson head coach Steve Potvin said there’s no easy answer as to why teams like San Diego and Tucson have seen their promising starts flip on end, nor for how once-woebegone clubs, including the Ontario Reign and Bakersfield Condors, have gone from worst to … if not first, somewhere much more respectable.
Ontario, which started a league-worst 1-10-2-0, has won four straight — including two this week alone over the Roadrunners in Tucson by 5-1 and 6-2 margins. Bakersfield, for its efforts, has rebounded to win nine of 10 after going winless in its first five games.
What Potvin does attribute it to is the wackiness of the season as a whole — a shortened, condensed version of schedule that, if it were a tangible object, would surely be held together with nothing more than duct tape and some twine.
“There’s so many moving parts,” Potvin said of how teams have been forced to figure out how to tackle the understood two-headed AHL objectives of developing talent, then winning. “There’s ups and downs, there’s call-ups, guys that are fighting for contracts, and the shortened season. There’s a lot to consider. Obviously, we also had some games that we didn’t play because of COVID.
“There’s so many different variables that come into play.”
In the case of the Roadrunners (6-8-0-0) and the Gulls (9-9-0-0), the recent champions of futility have the chance to right their own ships. By doing so, they may just send their opponent further into the Pacific Division abyss when they square up for back-to-back 5 p.m. faceoffs Saturday and Sunday at Tucson Arena.
The Roadrunners’ only win in their last seven games was a 4-1 victory over the Gulls last Friday.
Potvin isn’t making excuses for his team’s play; instead he’s putting Tucson’s struggles onto his own shoulders. It’s his job, he said, to figure out how to make his club tick as they sit just a little more than week away from the halfway point of their 36-game schedule.
“To be honest with you, it’s something that I enjoy,” he said of the soul-searching the Roadrunners must do from this point forward. “I love the challenge of this scenario. This is part of the business. You don’t get to this point by not having gone through this at some point in your life.
“I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning,” he added. “I’m looking forward to getting back to the rink, and looking forward to trying to get the next step and trying to get these guys to buy in and to believe in themselves. There’s no doubt in my mind these guys can do it.”
Home hasn’t been sweet for Roadrunners
To turn things around, the Roadrunners will have to figure out how to win at home.
The Roadrunners, officially, are a league-worst 0-5 at home, with opponents averaging five goals a game on Tucson Arena ice. Take into account the two games they played as the designated “away” team in Southern Arizona to start the season against the San Jose Barracuda — pandemic-related restrictions kept the Barracuda from being able to start the year in their actual home facility — and Tucson’s record improves to 2-5. That’s still a bottom-five total when compared to the rest of the league. The Roadrunners are 4-3 away from Tucson, taking into account the San Jose games being played in Tucson Arena.
Over the team’s half-decade history, Tucson has arguably been better on the road during its most successful stretches. That includes a .650 winning mark away from Tucson last season, compared with an equally-robust .645 at home.
The year before, Tucson had a dead-even .559 clip both in Tucson and elsewhere. And the season prior to that: .574 at home and a whopping .750 on the road.
Roadrunners defenseman Dysin Mayo said the club’s struggles have more to do with their two home series, where they were outscored 25-9 over five losses.
“These last couple home games here against Texas, and here against Ontario for these two games, we’re just too soft,” Mayo said. “We’re not hitting guys. It’s easy for teams to play against us. We’re losing foot races against the puck. We’re losing one-on-one battles. We just have to come in with a mentality to compete.”
No tickets, but TV
Tucson Arena opened its doors to spectators this week, and roughly 650 fans attended home games Tuesday and Wednesday. Those are technical sell-outs, as Pima County health protocols are limiting the Roadrunners to just 10% of capacity for home games.
Saturday and Sunday’s matchups with San Diego are both sellouts, meaning fans will have find other ways to catch up with the action.
Saturday, that includes the Roadrunners’ second of five local television broadcasts of the season, to air on KWBA-TV. Roadrunners radio play-by-play voice Adrian Denny is on the call for the live broadcast. Denny’s call will run as a TV/radio simulcast, also on 1450-AM.
