The Gulls lose game 2 of their playoff round against Ontario Reign, resulting in an early exit from the highly-anticipated 2022 Calder Cup Playoffs.
An unfortunate early exit for the Gulls closes a chapter on a season where there was positive chemistry in the locker room, but didn't quite find ways to secure a significant amount of victories to become a strong contender entering the playoffs.
Gulls head coach Joel Bouchard says he is exiting this season feeling proud of his team, for showing resiliency even in the tough times throughout the season, in particularly Thursday night when they erased a 2-0 deficit and took the game to overtime.
"Obviously, not the result you want, but a lot of young teams or a team that (doesn’t) have enough or the chemistry between the coaches and the players is not exactly optimum, then they would bail out and call it a day and they didn’t," Gulls head coach Joel Bouchard stated after the game. "They definitely didn’t do that. The guys were outstanding, they fought until the end, they did what we told them to even being down 2-0 so this is a lot of guys grow a lot tonight. I think that playoff was a good experience for a lot of our players and I think tonight we really gave ourselves a chance."
San Diego goaltender Lukas Dostal also spoke after the game, stating that he's also proud of the squad for showing true character by showing grit in coming back from being down 2-0 against a team like Ontario.
"I’m proud of the guys," Dostal said after the game, in which he made an impressive 22 consecutive stops on goal after conceding the first two scores. "We were losing two nothing right at the beginning, so the guys just bounced back. we just tried our best to stay in the series and it’s what I think we did. As a young group it’s always…you might feel a little down maybe, but I was so proud of the guys that they actually didn’t. That they were still working the same way and they just trust the process the whole game. Yeah, we just headed to overtime, you know, and there whatever can happen." he added.
