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AHL Tucson Roadrunners

Game #25: Tucson Roadrunners vs. San Jose Barracuda

December 20, 2023 - American Hockey League (AHL)
Tucson Roadrunners News Release


Game #24: Tucson Roadrunners (14-8-1-1) vs. San Jose Barracuda (8-11-4-0)

Time: Saturday, December 20, 8:00 p.m. MST, Tech CU Arena, San Jose, California.

Referees: #86 Tatu Kunto, #92 John Lidner

Linespersons: #57 Matthieu Audet, #21 Alexander Ledovskiy

The Tucson Roadrunners, unbeaten in seven of their last 10 games, begin a three-game road trip in California up in the Bay against the San Jose Barracuda for their third matchup of the season. Tucson is coming off of a split series against the Abbotsford Canucks tied for third place in the Pacific Division. As for the Barracuda, they are coming off of their most impressive weekend of their season sweeping the Western Conference's first ranked Calgary Wranglers an outscoring them 8-2 in a two-game home series Friday and Saturday.

Three things:

In their last two-game series at the TCC on December 1 and 2, the Roadrunners swept San Jose, scoring 12 combined goals in two games; including two four-goal first periods. Travis Barron was the Cuda killer scoring four goals in the series; including Tucson's first hat trick of the season on December 2. Tucson's last power-play goals also came against San Jose where it went 2-for-5 on Dec. 1, the team's only game this season with multiple power-play goals.

Tucson is undefeated on the road this season when scoring the first goal of the game at 8-0 and has not lost two regulation games in a row since October when they were swept by the Bakersfield Condors. In road games this season, Tucson is only allowing a 2.58 goals-against per-game with an 84.9% penalty-kill. Starting goaltender Matthew Villalta has a 2.51 goals against and .920 save percentage with an 8-2-0-0 record away from home.

The Roadrunners have allowed less than 30 shots in six-straight games and average just 27.8 shots allowed per-game on the season. In that same span, the team is 17-for-19 (89.4%) on the penalty-kill and has not allowed a goal when down a man in four-straight games. In addition, Tucson scored two shorthanded goals in 53 seconds against Abbotsford on Friday and now have four total shorthanded goals on the season.

What did they say?

"Yeah, it will be my first time going back there so it should be pretty fun, I'm looking forward to it."

Forward John Leonard on returning to San Jose to play against his former team.

Latest Transactions:

On Wednesday, December 20, forward Milos Keleman was reassigned to the Tucson Roadrunners (AHL).

Number to Know:

3 - The number of game-winning goals Josh Doan has on the road this season with all coming in the final 10 minutes of regulation. In addition, all three game-winning goals on the road for Doan have come in one-score games where the game was tied in the third period; including Tucson's last away game in Colorado when Doan scored the game-winning goal with 22 seconds left in regulation on December 9. Doan's five total game-winning goals this season ranks first in the AHL.

WE'LL DO IT LIVE:

Tonight's game will be broadcasted live on the radio on FOX Sports 1450AM and the iHeartRadio app. Coverage will begin at 7:45 p.m. MST with Roadrunners Warm-up hosted by Jonathon Schaffer, before the "Voice of the Roadrunners" Adrian Denny has all the action from Tech CU Arena. The game can also be seen on AHLtv.

Check out the Tucson Roadrunners Statistics



American Hockey League Stories from December 20, 2023


The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.

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