Game 31: San Diego Gulls v San Jose Baracuda – Jan 4

With Kossila, Sideroff, Tropp and Kopacka still inured, Dallas Eakins elected to insert new PTO Johno May into the line up, making McParland a healthy scratch. May was put on a line with Carrick and Jones.

The Barracuda held the shot advantage and a narrow lead in chances until an unlucky bounce in the last four minutes led to an easy tap in for San Jose and the lead.

Just as the Barracuda appeared to have another clear cut opportunity, their open man blew a tyre and the Gulls came back the other way on a three on one – a back and forth passing play between Steel, Blandisi and Terry eventually led to a nice top shelf goal from the recently named All Star to even things up just as the period ended.

The second period started slow, but soon opened up with San Diego seeing multiple high danger chances, including a breakaway from Ben Thomson but he could not fool the Cuda net-minder at the finish.

After some hard hitting from Ben Thomson and Adam Cracknell it was the latter that found space- coming down the left wing where he fired a hard shot blocker-side past the San Jose goaltender for the 2-1 lead.

San Diego poured it on from there and grabbed a two-goal lead less than three minutes into the final period. A nice pass from the point into the slot met a wide open Troy Terry cutting across who then deeked the goaltender out of his way to slide in a very pretty goal, his second of the night.

San Diego continued to pressure, and namely Jo Blandisi kept up his relentless buzzing around the ice, forcing turnovers, feeding Terry and having one of his strongest games of the season, but a tripping minor assessed to Trevor Murphy put the Gulls down a man with just under thirteen minutes remaining.

The Gulls were able to kill off the penalty, but the resulting momentum allowed San Jose to make inroads in the Gulls’ zone, getting several chances including that one Kevin Boyle was some how able to keep out while doing snow angels in desperation. The Baracuda were awarded another penalty on the very next shift on a dubious call when Sam Carrick’s stick was held, but the officials deemed his response as roughing.

On the resulting offensive zone faceoff the Baracuda set up on the man advantage, set the screen, and hammered home a one-timer that Boyle had no chance at seeing to bring the score to three to two with just under seven minutes remaining.

San Jose continued to pressure but proved a tad overzealous in doing so as Trevor Murphy drew a tripping penalty of his own coming through the neutral zone. Jo Blandisi continued his strong game by collecting a loose puck that was blocked in front from an Ondrej Sustr point shot and quickly firing it home for the 4-2 lead with three and a half minutes remaining.

San Jose pulled their goaltender with three minutes left and had one high danger chance while also putting the Gulls on the penalty kill during that span. They managed to get one by Boyle just before the buzzer sounded to end regulation, but the Gulls came away victorious once again by a score of 4-3. San Diego extended their win streak to five and their points streak to ten.