AHL San Diego Gulls

POSTGAME - San Diego 3 at Tucson 5

Published on January 17, 2018 under American Hockey League (AHL)
San Diego Gulls News Release


San Diego lost for the second straight game to the Tucson Roadrunners in a 5-3 setback tonight at Tucson Convention Center Arena. The Gulls led 1-0 in the first period, but goals by Dylan Strome and Mike Sislo in a span of 18 seconds in the final 30 seconds of the opening period gave Tucson a lead they wouldn't relinquish. Strome earned his second consecutive three point game against the Gulls (1-23) and Lawson Crouse tallied his first career three-point game with a multi-goal effort (2-13). Hunter Miska stopped 20-of-23 shots to improve to 11-3-0 on the season.

Giovanni Fiore opened the scoring for San Diego at 8:37 of the first period with his seventh goal of the season, his first in 14 games.

Kevin Roy extended his point streak to a season high four games (1-56) dating back to Nov. 4 with a power-play goal, his sixth goal of the season. Roy's four-game point streak is tied for the longest of his career, set on two previous occasions, with the most recent from Feb. 10-17, 2017 (0-55).

Corey Tropp tallied his 11th assist and 20th point of the season. Tropp has points in 12 of his last 13 games (9-817) and has scored more than a point-per game this season in 19 games played (9-1120).

Nic Kerdiles scored his sixth goal of the season, while Joe Blandisi, Eric Fehr, Mitch Hults, Marcus Pettersson and Ryan White each tallied assists. Kevin Boyle made 25 saves to snap his career high five-game win streak dating back to from Dec. 13-Jan. 6.

QUOTES: Gulls Head Coach Dallas Eakins, on the first period: "We were on our heels a lot. Some self-inflicted wounds, long periods of time in our zone and I thought we were going to get out of it. It was one of those nights where it was like, 'OK we were going to get out of this with a 1-0 lead, we can regroup and get after it.' Two ended up in our net very quickly and again, just mental mistakes, something that we haven't seen a lot from our group over the past few weeks."

On the goals proximity..."It's something we talk about all the time. There's an area in front of the net that we call it the red zone and you have to own it at both ends. You have to be inside and own it in your own end, and the way you're going to score goals in this league, and the NHL, is to get inside and own the red zone in their zone. They got inside and we got pushed around a little bit in that area.'

On Tucson forward Dylan Strome... "You have to be hard on him, without taking penalties, and not to inflict injury or anything else. You have to know that he's on the ice, you have to understand that he has a certain skill set and you have to let him know that any time he touches the puck we're going to have pressure. We seem to, for whatever reason, when he gets the puck we want to back away from him and try to defend instead of being highly aggressive and cutting off his arms and his hands with our body and dislodging him from the puck. We'll talk about him again. The kid's having a great first season, he's a very good player but good players, the more time you give them the more points they're going to put up."

On Wednesday's 10:05 a.m. local start..."We're going to practice and we're going to practice at 9 a.m. Tucson time tomorrow morning. It'll be a fast turnaround, get the things that we think are necessary done and then it's right back to business Wednesday morning."

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American Hockey League Stories from January 17, 2018


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