Gulls Edge Eagles, 5-4
AHL San Diego Gulls

Gulls Edge Eagles, 5-4

Published on January 9, 2026 under American Hockey League (AHL)
San Diego Gulls News Release


The San Diego Gulls defeated the Colorado Eagles 5-4 in a shootout Friday night at Blue Arena, their first victory in Colorado since March 2, 2022 (5-2 win). San Diego improves to 15-9-6-2 on the season.

Nathan Gaucher scored his second goal and third goals of the season, his first AHL career multi-goal effort. The night included his first short-handed tally of the campaign and second of his AHL career. San Diego now leads the AHL in shorthanded goals with seven.

Justin Bailey scored his 12th goal of the season and earned his eighth assist of the season, giving him 2-3=5 points across his last four games. He leads active Gulls skaters in goals.

Nico Myatovic netted his fifth goal of the season, his second power-play goal. He is the only Gulls skater with multiple power-play goals and shorthanded goals (2) and one of seven players league wide.

Sam Colangelo recorded his eighth assist of the season to extend his point streak to seven games (2-6=8) and his assist streak to six games (1-6=8). His six-game assist streak is the longest by a Gull this season and tied for fifth-longest in the AHL in 2025-26.

Ryan Carpenter collected his 15th assist of the season, giving him points in six of his last eight games (2-5=7).

Judd Caulfield tallied an assist for the second straight game (0-2=2), his ninth overall. Caulfield also netted the lone shootout goal for San Diego.

Nikolas Brouillard collected an assist, his ninth of the season.

Calle Clang earned his sixth victory of the season, stopping a season-high 38-of-42 shots in regulation and OT. Clang also stopped all five shootout attempts faced. He improves to 6-1-3 on the season.

The Gulls return to Blue Arena tomorrow night to face the Eagles in the second half of their back-to-back (6:05 p.m. PST).

POSTGAME QUOTES

SAN DIEGO GULLS

Center Nathan Gaucher

On recording his first career AHL multi-goal game

It just felt good. It felt like our line played well. Set the tone in that third period by starting a period as well. I think there's a couple cleanups we should do as a team. Don't give them as much speed and odd man rush, but I think we did a good job of coming back and ended up with a win.

On when the belief kicked back in tonight

That fourth goal kind of saw a lucky bounce, and you don't want to see that when you're trying to make a comeback. But I mean, there's still 12 minutes in the game, and I guess the goal got the boys started, and then we excelled in six-on-five as well. We know we can score at the end of the game, so it's all we did and ended up being good for us.

On defeating the division leaders

That's a big focus for us for sure. We want to challenge ourselves again amongst the best, and that's the best team in our conference as well. So, I think we were right up there with them, and it's a good challenge for us, and we answered today.

On facing Colorado again tomorrow

Play a little more mature game. Try to be mature on the road as well. Put some pucks deep and, it's a cliché, but just kill their speed and try to be on top of them so they don't have as many odd man rushes. If we keep a mature game and play style, we'll be on a good side.

Right wing Judd Caulfield

On his shootout goal

I got a couple of moves, honestly, when I come in like that, I like going five hole. It just kind of depends what the goalie is doing there... That's kind of my go to, that same approach. And then there's usually a few different ways you can branch off of it. But I like kind of going five hole, it's usually there. So, it worked out for me tonight, and I was glad to see it go in.

On Nathan Gaucher and what sparked the team

[Gaucher] had an unbelievable game tonight. He had two big goals for us, and it's just great to see the puck going in for him. He's shooting the puck well and just playing real physical and yeah, we just have resiliency in our group, and we just band together in those tough moments. You can't get too high or get too low. When we're up two, I think [we] might have got a little bit of complacency in our game, but we fought back and we were resilient. There's just no quitting our game, which we love to see as all our players, and we just bond together there.

On his line with Gaucher and Yegor Sidorov

It's so much fun playing with both those guys. They're both hard-working guys, hard skill and just know how to make plays. It's easy playing with them, because they do so much dirty work and just stuff that might not always get recognized. Just banging bodies and making it hard on the other team. And we saw some success tonight, so we're gonna have to keep that rolling and keep the chemistry up.

On facing Colorado again tomorrow

We saw what gave us success tonight. When we were being physical and just not giving them any time and space, we had a lot of success. But when we kind of let them fly in with their speed, we know they have a lot of speed, so we got to stay above that. And when they had that speed, they kind of had momentum for a bit, but we just stay on top of them and be physical. I think that's our game, and we know that if we play that way, we're able to take these guys.

Head coach Matt McIlvane

On the team scoring in the last minute of play

Well, there's 60 minutes on the clock for a reason, so sometimes you have to use them all. We've got a lot of resiliency in our team. We're very aware that we're capable of mounting comebacks and pushing games into overtime. We've done this multiple times throughout the course of the season. You don't want to be in that situation. You want to be in control of the game, but the character that the guys showed to get to that point was excellent.

On defeating Colorado at home

I don't think the San Diego Gulls have won in Colorado since 2022 and so it's a good feat for our group. It's just a reminder of where our team is this year. We can come into Colorado and win. The thing is, I don't even think we played our best game like that. There's so much that can be improved upon in this game that we'll be excited to look into and get better at, but that was a good team win.

On the line of Nathan Gaucher, Judd Caulfield, and Yegor Sidorov

We went on a run last year, and this line was together, and they were our driving force of our identity play. Put them back together when the moment was right here, and they've picked up basically right where they left off. Nathan was excellent tonight, obviously, with two goals. Judd was a horse the whole game, but then bearing down in a shootout winner, that was really cool. So that line, they've got great chemistry together, and they showed it today.

On facing Colorado again tomorrow

We didn't like as much as we gave up today. There's opportunities to clean our game up in a lot of areas. We'll celebrate the heck out of our character, but we'll be excited to improve for tomorrow.

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American Hockey League Stories from January 9, 2026


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