Gulls Open Season Series Against Eagles
Nov 1, 2026By Ashley Rubin/SanDiegoGulls.com
The San Diego Gulls will host the Colorado Eagles for their first meeting of the season tonight at Pechanga Arena San Diego (5 p.m. PST; TV: AHLTV on FloHockey; Radio: Gulls Audio Network).
Tonight’s contest marks the first time the Gulls and Eagles will meet since their best-of-three series in the first round of the 2025-26 Calder Cup Playoffs. Colorado walked away from the series with a two-game sweep and ended up going all the way to the conference finals where they ultimately lost to the Chicago Wolves. Despite going down in two games, it was significant experience for San Diego as it was their first playoff appearance since the 2021-22 season.
San Diego holds an all-time record of 18-16-0-1 against Colorado, including an 11-12-0-0 record at home. Last season the Gulls put up a 3-5-0-0 record against the Eagles in an eight-game series, showing improvement from a 0-4-0-0 record posted in the 2024-25 season.
Colorado and San Diego have each played 10 games so far. Colorado has posted a 6-3-1-0 record with 13 points to put them in third place in the Pacific Division. The Eagles last played a back-to-back series against the Charlotte Checkers Oct. 27-28, dropping the first contest but winning the second. San Diego played just last night falling in overtime against the Henderson Silver Knights and look to learn from that loss tonight.
"Be ready from the start," Lucas Pettersson said. "I feel like the game kind of slipped away a little bit in the first for us. We could have used them playing a lot of games here recently to our advantage a little bit more, pushing the pace. So, we'll take that with us tomorrow and be ready and play full 60."
Despite the loss, the Gulls put in good effort and saw good things. Herman Traff and Pettersson each scored their first career AHL goals last night. Their goals brought San Diego back from being down 2-0 in the second. The team was perfect on the penalty kill, going 3-for-3 and was able to capitalize on one power play. Damian Clara also saved an AHL career-high 39-of-42 shots.
"We battled back," assistant coach Kelly Buchberger said. "We were pretty flat in the first period. We gave up two goals, and then we came back in the second. A lot better second period and then got into overtime. Unfortunately, we lost it in the first minute, but it was a good effort coming back."
Following last night's contest, tonight will mark San Diego’s first set of back-to-back contests with both games hosted at home this season. The team has played two back-to-back series on the road, one against the San Jose Barracuda and one against the Tucson Roadrunners. They have also had back-to-back contests with an away game against the Coachella Valley Firebirds on Oct. 9 at followed by a game against Henderson Oct. 10 at Pechanga Arena. The Gulls have gone 2-0-1-0 in second games.
San Diego will next head back on the road for the first time since Oct. 17 as they once again meetup with the Henderson Silver Knights for another back-to-back series starting Friday, Nov. 6 at Lee’s Family Forum (7 p.m. PST).