The Gulls lot their season opener a week ago 2-1 in Bakersfield. After that game the coaching staff praised the hard work and fight the team showed after a rough opening 10 minutes.
The Gulls lost their second game of the year 5-1 on Friday night in San Jose. This time the assessment was not nearly as positive.
“If you don’t play hard, what happened to us tonight is going to happen to you,” said Gulls Head Coach Kevin Dineen. “There’s a lot of different areas that we have to improve on. Certainly our effort has to be much higher. We left our goalie out to dry way too many times. I was proud of the way (goalie Anthony) Stolarz battled but your goalie can’t be your hardest working player or else you’re in trouble.”
Stolarz made 37 saves and was under siege for most of the night as the Barracuda were constantly controlling the pace of play. San Jose scored twice in the first period and twice more in the second period to take a 4-0 lead.
Rookie defenseman Hunter Drew finally got the Gulls on the board with his first professional goal in the third period but the Barracuda scored 38 seconds later to stomp out any thoughts of a massive comeback.
The Gulls get a chance to rebound on Saturday night when the play the Heat in Stockton and the quick turnaround should be welcome.
“I don’t think you want to sit on this game for too long,” said Dineen. “We have belief in our group here and expect a much better effort tomorrow night.”
