Gulls Offense Hits The Jackpot In First Win At Orleans Arena
Feb 25, 2022By AJ Manderichio/SanDiegoGulls.com
Vegas, baby!
The San Diego Gulls earned the franchise’s first win at Orleans Arena, defeating the Henderson Silver Knights 5-2 tonight. The win vaulted San Diego one point ahead of the Tucson Roadrunners in the tight race for playoff positioning in the Pacific Division.
A trio of Gulls – Danny O’Regan (2-1=3), Vinni Lettieri (0-3=3) and Greg Pateryn (0-3=3) – recorded three-point performances in the milestone victory. Alex Limoges (2-0=2) scored twice to power a standout night for San Diego’s power-play.
Lukas Dostal stopped 27-of-29 shots to collect his 25th career win, surpassing Anthony Stolarz (24) for sole possession of second on the team’s all-time wins list.
“Yeah, you know I think we played an all-around pretty good game and our power play wasn’t doing well before,” Pateryn said. “We got some good bounces and some good shots, kept it simple, got the puck in the net a few times there, which is huge. I thought we played on the right side of the puck and limited the good chances against and that’s all you can really do in this this game and if you do that, you’ll usually come out on top.”
Gage Quinney and Pavel Dorofeyev scored for Henderson, who suffered their third loss in the last four games. Goaltender Jiri Patera stopped 20 shots, saddled with the loss for the fourth time in his last five starts.
O’Regan – in Henderson for the first time as a visitor – burned his former club for two goals in the first 5:01 of the game.
Hopened the scoring at 4:31, collecting his eighth goal of the year to give San Diego a 1-0 lead.
Lettieri kept a puck alive along the side boards, sending a short pass to a waiting Kodie Curran at the point. The defenseman continued it on toward the net, where it hit off traffic and bounced between the hash marks. O'Regan collected it, spinning and firing a shot past Patera.
He would strike just 30 seconds later, doubling San Diego's advantage with a power-play goal.
Lettieri cut toward the faceoff dot, gaining possession of the puck at the start of the man advantage. His pass found Pateryn, who immediately sent a shot toward the net. Patera made the first save but left a rebound for O'Regan to poke home for his ninth goal of the season.
The two goals mark the first multi-goal performance as a Gull for O'Regan, who collected his fourth multi-point performance of the season.
“You play versus your old teammate, your old organization,” Gulls head coach Joel Bouchard explained. “There’s a bit of an emotion, it’s not unusual, I’ve lived it too as a player and you always realize when some teammates of yours have played somewhere before and there’s always a bit of emotion. So, obviously, they played really well. They had good games, so I think there’s a lot of positive from tonight’s game.”
Dostal would stand strong from there, turning aside the Henderson attack and keeping the Silver Knights off the board in the opening frame.
Quinney cut the deficit to one, scoring a power-play goal early in the middle frame to get Henderson on the board.
Daniil Miromanov found the left wing with a pass at the Gulls blue line, and Quinney worked himself in alone on Dostal. His shot from the slot beat the Gulls goaltender high to the glove side for his fifth goal of the season.
A key save by Dostal – and a goal shortly after – helped San Diego turn the tide.
With the Gulls on the power play, Silver Knights defenseman Ian McCoshen flipped a puck from his own zone to a streaking Jonas Rondbjerg, who worked himself behind the San Diego defense. He moved in alone on Dostal, looking to deke the Gulls netminder and score the game-tying goal, but the Czechia native kept his pads on the ice and denied the chance.
Moments later, Limoges would collect the first of his two power-play goals.
The Gulls countered off the Henderson chance, with Lettieri holding the puck above the faceoff circle. He sent a floating pass to the post and Limoges, who deflected the puck off the glove and back of Petera for his ninth goal of the season.
Lettieri tied a season-high with three points and has six points (2-4=6) against Henderson this season.
The score would hold until the final 10 minutes of regulation, where the Gulls pulled ahead to put the game away.
Limoges scored his second power-play goal, giving the Gulls a 4-1 lead with 6:54 left in regulation.
O'Regan won a draw right after the Gulls earned their power-play chance, sending the puck to Pateryn. The Gulls captain fired a puck on net Patera stopped, but the Henderson netminder left a loose puck in the slot. Limoges, alone in front, moved the puck from his backhand to his forehand and sent it past the diving netminder for his 10th goal of the season.
After going 0-for-17 over the last five games, the Gulls broke through for a season-high three power-play goals. It marks the most man-advantage tallies of the season and the highest output since Apr. 13, 2021 in a 7-4 win over the Ontario Reign.
Lucas Elvenes – another former Silver Knight – earned revenge over his former club on his seventh goal of the season with 4:29 left in regulation.
The forward started the play, picking off a Henderson clearing attempt and finding Benoit-Olivier Groulx low in the offensive zone. The Gulls center sent a spinning, backhand pass toward the net, finding Jacob Perreault in front. His attempt slid just wide of Petera, but Elvenes cleaned up the rebound, stuffing it into the net for the four-goal advantage.
Tonight marked the seventh straight game San Diego scored four-or-more goals.
“Something that, during the COVID time, I took time to look at was how can we look at something different, think outside the box and bring a different look to the team and we didn’t connect as much in the beginning, but we saw the look and we were like, ‘It’s there, it’s there, it’s got to be coming.’ and as you can see, over the last few games, we scored a lot more goals,” Bouchard said. “So, it was fun tonight to see the guys connecting on some of the stuff we talked about and we’re going to keep pushing the for sure.”
Henderson refused to go down without a fight, pulling within three on Dorofeyev’s goal with 2:49 remaining in the game.
The Gulls would shut things down from there, surviving a late power-play chance to earn the franchise’s milestone win.
The two teams will finish the back-to-back series tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m. PT.