 |
| (Credit: Taylor Sammarco/Texas Stars) |
It happens a couple times every season. Some nights, things just don’t fall your way. Tonight, that was the story for the home side as Texas suffered a 6-1 defeat at home to the Pacific Division leading San Jose Barracuda.
Coach Laxdal was direct, “If we want to continue to make fundamentally lazy mistakes on both sides of the puck, we’re going to pay the price for it. We didn’t get the goaltending performance we wanted out of Point, but we also didn’t give him much help.”
Laxdal split the blame for each goal equally with three on the forwards and three on the defense. Texas is truly suffering from missing of Reece Scarlett and Gavin Bayreuther in the lineup.
“We made some harsh mistakes here the last two nights. I didn’t think it was a great game from the backend tonight. You miss Scarlett and Bayreuther. [We] have to be a tighter checking group.”
Denis Gurianov continued his point streak with an assist but broke his goal streak at six.
The Stars scored first and early, seemingly setting themselves up for a good night. Michael Mersch got a redirect on a fade-away shot by the hot Gurianov. The Barracuda came back hard with two quick ones. Halbgewachs and Middleton scored just 61 seconds apart to set the score at 2-1 for San Jose in short order.
The second period was really where things broke open for the Barracuda. Manuel Wiederer scored early in the period for what was still a manageable differential for Texas. Dillon Heatheringon put one off the crossbar on the power play and later Ben Gleason hit the iron on a drive in deep. The two could have really stemmed the tide before the SJ outbreak.
“We had some moments offensively but not enough tonight.”
In less than two minutes, the Barracuda scored three goals and ended Colton Point’s night. As if to show that it wasn’t all on Point, Bow gave up a goal on his first shot against on the evening. Point finished with 11 saves on 16 shots.
Mercilessly, the Stars would not allow another goal in the contest. They would also not score another. Texas had a late power play that could have provided a bit of a trampoline into their next contest, but San Jose had the best chance of the advantage shorthanded.
Texas has a few days to lick their wounds before facing Ontario on the road on Thursday night.
Tonight's lines:
Mersch-Hintz-Gurianov
Morin-Condra-Payne
Caamano-L'Esperance-Markison
Hargrove-Phelan-Laberge
Heatherington-Nyberg
Hanna-Hansson
Gleason-Hanley
Point
Bow
Injuries, scratches, and notes:
Scarlett (season-ending ACL injury)
Bayreuther (day-to-day)
Calderone, Mascherin, Vala (scratch)
Tonight’s attendance was 4,841.
AHL Gamesheet - Texas v. San Jose - October 27 2018
Miss McKenna yet?
ReplyDelete