SAN DIEGO – The San Diego Gulls (11-11-1-1; 24 pts.) fell 4-3 in the shootout to the Tucson Roadrunners (14-6-3-0; 31 pts.) in front of 7,521 fans at Valley View Casino Center. Chris Mueller (2-0=2) scored the game-tying goal with 2:26 left in regulation and tallied the game-winner in the fourth round of the shootout for Tucson.
The Gulls were paced by their defense tonight as Brandon Montour (1-3=4) and Jaycob Megna (1-2=3) led the way with multi-point efforts. Montour tied a career high with his first four-point game since Nov. 11, 2015 vs. Bakersfield and has now registered seven multi-point games this season. Megna’s three points marked a career-high in his 125 games of AHL experience.
“When you get to a shootout you never know, you just flip a coin,” said head coach Dallas Eakins. “We were slow out of the gates, we were having trouble with the puck a little bit, but I thought those two guys (Montour and Megna) inspired our group.”
A defensive-minded first period saw the Gulls only register four shots on net. San Diego earned two power plays but could not convert on either opportunity.
The Roadrunners took a 1-0 advantage at 19:49 of the opening frame when Michael Bunting deflected Kyle Wood’s shot from the point through Gulls goaltender Dustin Tokarski.
Early in the second period, with the clubs skating 4-on-4, Megna took a feed in the slot from Antoine Laganiere and beat Tucson netminder Justin Peters to knot the game at one apiece. Megna has tallied 2-4=6 points in his last three games and his two goals this season are a career-high.
With San Diego shorthanded, Ryan Garbutt scored his first goal as a Gull at 7:07 of the second period when his shot from the boards trickled past Peters to give the Gulls a 2-1 lead. San Diego’s advantage lasted a mere 46 seconds as the Roadrunners struck back quickly when Zbynek Michalek’s bid from the slot found a way past Tokarski to knot the game 2-2.
At 14:54 of the second period, the Gulls took a bench minor for too-many-men on the ice and Tucson took advantage as veteran Chris Mueller rocketed home a loose puck with traffic in front of Tokarski to give the Roadrunners a 3-2 edge after two periods of play.
The Gulls earned a 5-on-3man advantage early in the final frame and scored their first power-play goal in six games when rookie Kevin Roy buried a cross-ice pass from Montour to tie the game at three. Roy leads the team with 10 goals and has a three-game point streak (2-1=3).
At 11:25 of the third period, Montour found himself on the other end of a cross-ice pass, this time from Corey Tropp, and his snap shot beat Peters high to give the Gulls their first lead of the contest.
The Roadrunners tied the game 4-4 late in the third when Mueller notched his second of the night with 2:26 remaining. Mueller scooped up a loose puck and flipped it past a fallen Tokarski for his eighth of the season to extend the game to overtime.
The extra session provided end-to-end action throughout with both teams skating 3-on-3 for an entire five minutes. Neither team could find the back of the net resulting in a shootout. After three skaters from each team couldn’t find an answer, Chris Mueller scored the eventual winner in the fourth round to extend San Diego’s winless streak to six games (0-5-1).
“In a divisional game like this, it’s tough to give up five goals and win,” said Montour. “We are going through a rough patch now, but we have to keep battling.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.