With Kevin Boyle returning from injury, Dallas Eakins made one other tweak to his lineup. Inserting the previously injured Scott Moldenhauer and taking out Keaton Thompson.
The Gulls enjoyed a much more open run of play compared to the last game but that also went against them as Trevor Murphy made a bad clearance attempt from behind the net and the rim was intercepted by the annoyingly enthusiastic Colorado fore check. Boyle had no chance at the bang-bang play that resulted in the opening goal.
The second period was again; a more open style of play than the night before. With both teams trading chances. Kevin Boyle was forced to make stops on deflected shots and perimeter point shots.
San Diego came close on several opportunities – once when Sam Carrick was coming down the right wing in on net, he had an opportunity to shoot short side but elected to pass cross-crease to Kevin Roy who could not get his stick free to finish. Another was when Sam Steel found himself alone in the slot with speed and space to shoot but chose to feed a pass down low to Sherwood at the right post but the pass was broken up.
Both teams traded special teams chances as Sam Steel was slew-footed coming down the right side and Sustr was given an obvious interference penalty with less than a minute left in the second period. De Leo created a chance in the dying seconds of the four on four when he retrieved a puck from the Colorado goal line and dipsy-doodled his way through the entire Eagles team before losing control at the moment of truth.
The second period ended with shots 22-19 overall in favor of the Gulls.
The third started with a slightly more frenetic pace, accentuated by Kevin Boyle calmly stopping a one on one breakaway with his left shoulder.
But the Gulls continued to struggle to generate further offense owing to Colorado allowing them no space to play their possession game.
San Diego continued to pressure and the game opened up slightly as they started to play a more desperate style. Back to back breakaways were stopped by Boyle but a third clear cut chance was one too many and the Eagles took a 2-0 lead with three minutes left to play.
The Gulls pulled Boyle and held the Eagles zone for almost a full two minutes but again could not get one by the Colorado net-minder and went down in yet another disappointing lack of offense in front of their home faithful.
Colorado Eagle 2 – San Diego 0.
2024-2025 Game 25: San Diego Gulls at Tucson Roadrunners
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