The road was kind to the San Diego Gulls during the past week.
Playing three games in four days in three different cities, the Gulls came away with four of a possible six points following Saturday afternoon’s 4-3 overtime victory over San Jose at the SAP Center. The Gulls won Friday night at Stockton and traveled to San Jose by bus for the matinee affair.
The win temporarily put the Gulls (28-18-5-2) into fourth place in the Pacific Division, pending the outcome of the night action. It also put the Gulls just two points out of second place.
Maxime Comtois’ ninth goal of the season at 2:49 of overtime proved to be the game-winner.
“It’s a long week,” said Gulls coach Kevin Dineen. “We have lots of free time this week (ahead). Sleep when you’re dead, don’t worry about that right now. We’re in a really good division, and there’s a lot of good players out there and there’s even better teams.
“For us it’s really important that we understand what the daily process is but keep a little bit of an eye on the big picture. Two really big points tonight.”
Alex Dostie gave the Gulls a 1-0 lead in the first period, but it took two Troy Terry goals in the third period to send the game to overtime.
Kevin Boyle (7-6-2) made 29 saves for the Gulls.
“We were stuck in first gear the first period,” said Dineen. “It’s interesting, a lot of teams in the Eastern Conference play three games in three nights and it’s not an easy thing to do. We had a couple players, Kyle Criscuolo as well as Muels (Chris Mueller), share their experiences being in that situation.
“Some of us have been very fortunate to play only in the Western Conference here on the Pacific side of things, a little lighter schedule. It’s how you manage the game and we didn’t do a good job of it early, it looked like we were stuck in quicksand. I think we found our gear later in the game and really turned it on in the third. We don’t want to get into that desperation mode to play well.”
