Game 40: San Diego Gulls @ Texas Stars – Jan 26

Once again playing with a full complement of troops both in the forwards and back on defence, Dallas Eakins was again forced to make some tough decisions. Sitting Benoit and Thompson in favor of Sustr and Larsson. San Diego were looking to regroup after the embarrassing effort of the night before and Kevin Boyle got the start in the back to back before he left for the All Star Classic the next day.

This was Patrick Eaves’ last game of the two game extension requested and applied to his conditioning loan.

Play was mostly confined to the neutral zone for the first seven minutes – each team locked in a battle of wills, poke-checks and turnovers. San Diego managed to slowly gather momentum, and with that came chances.

With both teams skating at four-on-four due to Carrick getting caught on a retaliatory cross-checking penalty, and the Stars forward Laberge slightly unfairly being assessed a high-sticking call on the same play, Ben Street flew into the Stars’ zone, going wide on the left but finding an opening to fire a pass across the front of the net to the oncoming Corey Tropp for the game’s opening goal.

Two minutes later, directly after a strong shift from the Steel-Terry-Kopacka line, the Stars were forced to ice the puck. Ben Street won a faceoff back to Jacob Larsson who measured a smooth wrist shot on net that Street in turn deflected high past the Stars’ netminder to make it 2-0, and his second point of the night.

San Diego kept up the pressure, getting chances mainly from the Carrick-Street- Jones and the Terry-Steel-Kopacka lines – eventually getting a power-play when Patrick Eaves was hauled down on a trip – with four seconds left in the period the Stars were overzealous in a clearing attempt and incurred an additional delay of game penalty.

The middle frame began with twenty seconds of five-on-three, but the visitors could not capitalize; regardless San Diego kept up the pressure until Jack Kopacka received a pass coming late, pulled up at the top of the circles and fired a shot that the Texas goaltender could not track through traffic, eventually squeaking by him for the 3-0 lead

Texas would answer a few minutes later on an odd-man-rush with blistering speed. The combination of speed and hard, high perfect wrist shot proving too much for Boyle 

Side note: the Stars use the Ducks’ goal song because I guess nobody can be original anymore – I called out the Texas Stars’ account on it mid-game and got drawn into a lame twitter war with their mascot.

Sustr had a massive brain fart that thankfully Boyle was able to recover from when he sent an errand pass across the slot to a Texas player – have no idea what he was thinking there.

Texas carried momentum for the remainder of the period, including a two minute power play but Kevin Boyle played perhaps his strongest game yet, turning aside several point blank and cross ice opportunities.

The Stars continued to pressure Boyle to start the third, but he stood tall making some insane saves in the process.

San Diego then began to swing momentum back their way with some inspired shifts keeping the puck in the Texas zone through multiple shifts until a point shot from Trevor Murphy was tipped by Street to give the Gulls the 4-1 lead and the Gulls took it from there to hopefully began the win streak anew.