Bulls get win against Condors at Home

DALY CITY, Calif. – With only five defensemen, the San Francisco Bulls scrapped together one of their best defensive performances of the year on Wednesday to move into fifth place in the ECHL’s Western Conference standings.
 
The Bulls lost defenseman Rob Kwiet on his first shift against the Bakersfield Condors, but it didn’t stop the team from pulling out a 4-1 win in front of the home crowd at the Cow Palace.
 
“I was a little bit worried, but the guys played really well,” Head Coach Pat Curcio said. “They kept it simple and worked well as a unit.”
 
Curcio said Kwiet suffered a lower body injury and would be assessed Thursday morning.
 
The team is also without top defenseman Mikael Tam, who was called up to Worcester last week. Despite the losses, they limited the Condors to 20 shots on goal, 13 through 50 minutes of play.
 
“We’re a highly conditioned team. We work really hard in practice, so if we have to play with five D for a night it shouldn’t effect us,” defenseman Scott Langdon said.
 
The Bulls (9-12-1-2) opened the scoring at 4:47 of the first period when Daniil Tarasov fired the puck through Scott Greenham’s five-hole on the rush. It was Tarasov’s first game skating on the Bulls top line with Justin Bowers and Dean Ouellet. He also picked up a pair of assists and he now has nine points in six games with the club.
 
“He has great skill. He’s just young and learning the game,” Curcio said. “We moved him up on that line and thought those two guys might get him the puck and it clicked really early.”
 
Peter Sivak netted his seventh goal of the year on the power play with 2:27 remaining in the first period. It was a tic-tac-toe play that started at the point with Tarasov and went to Marek Viedensky along the boards before Sivak flipped it home at the side of the net. The Bulls power play was 1-for-5 on the night and is 14-for-31 in the team’s last seven games.
 
The Bulls had a chance to blow the game open in the second period when Evan Trupp received a double minor for high sticking. They failed to score on the power play, but received another shot immediately after when Trupp returned to the ice and was called for cross checking. The Condors thwarted the Bulls again and then netted a goal on their own power play, closing the gap to 2-1.
 
But it didn’t take long for the Bulls to respond. Sivak scored his second of the game (eighth of the season) 11 seconds later; killing any momentum the Condors had put together.
 
“That was huge,” Curcio said. “We’ve been telling Peter all week he’s got to get pucks in deep and the first puck he dumps in, [Alex] Tuckerman chips back to him and he shelves it.”
 
Ouellet scored his team leading 14th goal at the 16:16 mark of the second period. He is leading ECHL rookies with 14 goals and 22 points this season.
 
The Bulls took sole possession of fifth place in the Western Conference with the win moving two points ahead of the Colorado Eagles, who roll into San Francisco for a pair of games on Friday and Saturday night.
 
Curcio skated Jordan Clendenning alongside Kris Belan and Andrew Crescenzi on Wednesday to form a checking unit that can matchup against the Eagles top line which features the ECHL’s three leading scorers.
 
“We’ve just got to wear that line down so they don’t even want to be out there against us,” Clendenning said.
Contact the photographer Jack.Lima@prohockeynews.com