AVOIDING PENALTIES KEY FOR GULLS
The thought behind expanding the AHL’s Calder Cup playoff field to 23 teams was to provide more NHL prospects with valuable postseason experience.
When the San Diego Gulls take the ice for tonight’s Game 1 of a best-of-three first-round series against the Ontario Reign, they will do so with the type of roster that playoff expansion was designed to benefit.
The Gulls played 15 different rookies this season, will use a Game 1 lineup including three players who were playing college hockey as recently as March and as many as 16 players who are former NHL Draft picks.
San Diego earned the seventh and final seed in the Pacific division and thus will not host a first-round game. The Gulls were 28-33-4-3 overall and finished the regular season with losses in 10 of the final 11 games.
The reward is facing the second-seeded Reign, who won nine of 12 meetings between the teams this season including all six contests at Ontario’s Toyota Arena.
Like the Gulls, Ontario’s lineup will include a handful of players who spent time in the NHL this season.
The Gulls had four players return to San Diego from the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks in time to prepare for Game 1: forwards Buddy Robinson and
Hunter Drew and defensemen Trevor Carrick and Simon Benoit.
“It’s a chance to play more hockey and get more experience — playoff experience and that can only help me grow as a player,” said Benoit, who played 53 games with the Ducks after spending most of last season as a Gull. “Just taking it all in. Do my best.”
Unlike the Reign, whose parent club, the Los Angeles Kings are busy in the NHL playoffs, the entire Ducks/ Gulls organization will be focused on the AHL playoffs because the Ducks did not qualify for the postseason.
“There’s a focus on a few areas of the game where we need to make sure we’re really good and knowing what good teams are going to throw at you and we’ve got to be ready for anything,” Gulls coach Joel Bouchard said. “Although they’re a good team, we don’t have to be on our heels by any means. The guys are anxious. Playoffs are fun — that’s what you get to play for and at the end of the day, we really didn’t get playoffs the last few years because of COVID. It’s fun to see again.”
The keys to upsetting the Reign will involve getting sharp goalie play from Lukas Dostal and/or Olle Eriksson Ek, solid special teams and balanced scoring (the Gulls had an AHL-high 12 players score 10 or more goals this season).
The Gulls generally matched up well against Ontario at even strength but struggled on the penalty kill as the Reign scored goals on 11 of 42 man-advantage opportunities.
A big series from rookie forward Alex Limoges (23 goals, 17 assists, 20 power-play points) would be huge for San Diego, while the most dangerous Reign player figures to be forward Martin Frk, who scored 40 goals with 33 assists.
Keeping a handle on Frk and staying out of the penalty box will be essential, according to Drew, who scored six goals with five assists against Ontario this season.
“I don’t want to give too much away but they have a couple of good players I think you just key in on,” Drew said. “They’re a deep team — they’ve got four lines and three sets of defensemen that can play. I think we’ve just got to match their speed and play into our strengths instead of theirs.”