San Diego Pours Goals on Reign, Win 5-3

Mar 8, 2025

By Samantha Mason/SanDiegoGulls.com 

The San Diego Gulls wowed America’s Finest Fans tonight, defeating the rival Ontario Reign for the second night in a row 5-3. 

Last night, San Diego took the win against Ontario in an exciting overtime contest. Ryan Carpenter netted the game-winner, his second in just as many games and league-leading fourth of the season. 

The Reign started the scoring, taking the lead 2-0 in the first period. Justin Bailey put the Gulls on the scoreboard during the second with a penalty shot, the first of his career. 

"We stuck with what was working," said Bailey. "We've been battling for one another, going through that winning streak in February, really, I think, showed us like we can compete with every single team in this division, and we've competed with everybody and done really, really well against everyone for the last two months."

Judd Caulfield followed suit, tying the score 2-2 with an assist from Nathan Gaucher and Tyson Hinds, his seventh goal of the season. 

The Gulls took the lead with a third goal, scored by Nikita Nesterenko with less than a minute left in the frame. 

The Reign tied it back up 3-3, but Jan Mysak scored the fourth goal for his team with less than five minutes left to play, assisted by Yegor Sidorov and Nico Myatovic. 

Nathan Gaucher shot one more on the empty net, bringing the final score up to 5-3. 

"One of the things we've seen, we've talked about this plenty in our group, is the ability to come back and mount comebacks that are that seem insurmountable," said head coach Matt McIlvane. "We've seen us come back from those kinds of things as well. So, our group's capable of some miraculous comebacks. We've got a lot of character, grit, resiliency, and let's just keep our pedal to the metal here."

San Diego now heads into a week of well-deserved rest before coming back to Pechanga to host the Colorado Eagles in back-to-back contests next weekend.