Peoria’s Hat Trick: Rivermen Top Gulls 3rd Time This Week

Although his team suffered its third loss to the Peoria Rivermen in less than a week, Gulls Coach Mike O’Connell couldn’t be too angry at his players.

The Gulls came close to avenging two home losses but fell to first-place Peoria, 3-2, in overtime Saturday in front of 6,350 at the Peoria Civic Center.

Peoria had defeated the Gulls, 9-3 and 7-3, in San Diego earlier this week.

“We played a pretty hard game, so it’s hard to be dissappointed. But of course we would have liked to have come up with the victory,” O’Connell said. “We made some adjustments and improved our positional play. It was a good solid effort overall.”

It was the Rivermen’s 12th consecutive victory, three victories short of the International Hockey League’s record of 15 set by Salt Lake in 1988-89.

Peoria (12-1) is in first place in the Western Division with 24 points. And although the Gulls (5-7-2) lost, they took sole possession of second place with 12 points, one point ahead of Salt Lake and Phoenix. In the IHL, overtime losses are worth one point in the standings.

The Gulls’ Taylor Hall scored his first goal of the season three minutes, 51 seconds into the third period to tie the score 2-2 and send the game into overtime.

Steve Tuttle then scored the game-winning game goal for Peoria 3:35 into overtime.

David Bruce, the league’s leading scorer, scored his 15th goal of the season to give Peoria a 1-0 lead in the first period. But Gulls leading scorer Brent Sapergia scored his eighth goal of the season in the second period to tie the game, 1-1. A goal by Dave Thomlinson in the seond period gave Peoria a 2-1 lead.

Peoria outshot the Gulls, 41-32, and Gulls goalie Scott Brower stopped 38 shots.

The Gulls play at Fort Wayne tonight and return home to play host to Kansas City on Thursday and Friday at the San Diego Sports Arena.