San Diego Gulls

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Penalty killing, mascots continue to be a concern at Gulls games

By Larry Knowles

November 14, 2005

San Diego--If you talk to a beat reporter for the Gulls, they’ll tell you that penalty killing continues to be a problem. If you talk to me, I’ll tell you that the mascots need to be given a stern talking-to.

Mr. Yellow Pages, the official mascot of the Verizon Yellow Pages, big-leagued it and didn’t appear for the Gulls second home game of the season. A guest at the Gulls’ opener, Mr. Yellow Pages had received scant applause during introductions. It’s unclear whether the light reception played a part in his absence. Hey—try listing lawyers under "bottom feeders" instead of "attorneys," and maybe you’ll get a little respect.

At the first intermission, a heretofore-unknown mascot, a skating ice cube with the letters “sdice.com,” took the ice unannounced. He glided around and waved to the crowd, but how are you supposed to respond to an ice cube?

Maybe it’s me, but I just got the sense this dude was crashing the game. 

At the second intermission there was a kids’ tricycle race around the ice. Three kids set out and pedaled as best they could in a full lap. Someone will win, someone will come in second, and someone will finish third. That’s life. So, I had my money on the kid with the gray sweatshirt. He looked like an athlete.

But did he win? Noooooooo, because a certain six foot, winged individual took it upon himself to push the last place rider around the rink. My guy got rattled by the skullduggery happening behind him and tanked in the last twenty meters. Let me say this: Cheating has no place in tricycle racing.

Someone’s got to control these mascots before there’s an incident that brings unwanted attention onto this city.

As for the game, the Gulls slipped past the Phoenix Roadrunners 2-1 before 3,603 fans spread sparsely throughout the 13,000 iPay One Center. The lads from San Diego avenged an earlier loss to the Roadrunners when they were bludgeoned 7-1 in Phoenix on October 29^th.

After a slow start to the season, the winged scavengers got their first home win and third overall as they improve to 3-5-2.

“It’s good to get the monkey off the back,” said Gulls captain Jonathan Shockey. “You start out a little slow, you start out those first seven games on the road, there’s a lot of pressure to win, especially in this town.”

The Roadrunners looked positively dashing in their powder blue road uniforms, while the Gulls came out in a rather pedestrian white and black ensemble. Forget penalty killing—this team needs to work on its sartorial offenses first.

Midway through the period a Phoenix player took a bizarre pratfall as he scrambled to get on the ice. This guy was like the family dog that can’t wait to get out of the car. Fixated on the action in front of him, the guy’s left shoulder caught a teammate while his right leg caught the wall…and he lunged head first onto the ice.

“What was that?” a guy in the press box asked his colleague.

Two fights broke out during the contest, neither of them involving mascots. Near the end of the second period, Phoenix goon Brent Henley, 6’7” and 250, took on Gulls’ newcomer Cody McLeod. Henley welcomed McLeod to the ECHL with an unprovoked barrage of fists to the face.

When it was all sorted out, the refs didn’t so much penalize Henley as unseal an indictment. They hit him with:

• 2 minutes for crosschecking;
• 2 minutes for roughing;
• a 10 minute misconduct;
• and a 10 minute game misconduct.

Henley was escorted from the premises, where he was reportedly met by a beaming King Stahlman.

After the game, Gulls coach Martin St. Amour commented on the physical play. “The Roadrunners aren’t a very physical team, actually. They’ve got that one guy who got hit with a penalty and got tossed out of the game.”

“And they’ve got a couple of guys who played for our team, Pecker and Tiltgen,” he added. “They played a little harder tonight because they wanted to show up for their fans.”

Speaking of fighting, during the second intermission the Gulls dudes rolled out in a camouflaged buggy and shot t-shirts into the crowd with a pneumatic cannon. The crowd was outgunned on this night. Remember the opening scene of Blackhawk Down, when Aidid’s men start spraying bullets into an unarmed crowd at a relief camp? It was like that. Some shots were so hard that the t-shirts posed a real risk of decapitation. Section 16a became a kill zone. Other shirts flew up into the rafters. Somewhere around section 18a, there’s a nice souvenir from the game, if you want it.

After the second intermission, Gulls fans looked for a little payback after the Henley incident, not to mention having t-shirts shot at them. Midway through the third period a Roadrunner got laid out on a vicious forecheck. As the player lay prostrate and motionless on the ice, the PA system blared “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” Hey, San Diegans just like U2.

The ‘Runners fall to 3-6-2, and may want to think about sending Henley to mascot school. That’s the only way he’s gonna see the ice for a while.

Notes: The Gulls play their next home game against Bakersfield on Friday at 7:35. Free hot dogs will be given away to the first 3,500 in attendance.

San Diego Gulls official site: www.sandiegogulls.com

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