Goal 3:45 Into Overtime Puts Kalamazoo Past Struggling Gulls : Hockey: On a night defense rules, the San Diego offense, without Holland, manages plenty of shots but only one score in 2-1 loss.

The Gulls on Tuesday started their longest and most important home stand of the season. They can only hope its beginning doesn’t signal the end.

The Gulls and Kalamazoo skated into overtime before the Wings came up with the winning goal at 3:45 for a 2-1 victory that heaped disappointment on home team, which had hoped to make up ground in the Western Division.

Defenseman Enrico Ciccone scored his third goal of the season, as his shot, on a feeder from the left circle, grazed the stick of Gulls’ forward Steve Martinson on its way into the net, beating Gulls’ goalie Mark Reimer on the right side.

“Yeah, it’s diaspointing,” said Martinson, who was tangled up with a Wings player on the critical shot. “You get it going and you get that close, it’s tough to take.”

Said Gulls Coach Mike O’Connell: “After the first period we played 40 minutes of good hockey. Now, if we can just play 60 minutes that way, we can beat anybody in the league.”

Coming back to the San Diego Sports Arena, where they will play 17 of their remaining 28 games, the Gulls (24-25-5) had dropped three of their last four games but had lost very little ground in the standings.

That kind of luck wasn’t going to last forever.

So, perched in fourth with games against Western Division opponents Salt Lake and Phoenix, the second- and third-place teams, and Kansas City, in sixth, the time to move was now.

They moved, but even the first-period goal they gave up proved too costly.

The Gulls gave up a goal to center Jackson Penney at 14:18. Penney took an unblocked shot outside the right crease that slipped behind Reimer, who was making his first appearance in San Diego since Oct. 23.

By virtue of skating with an offense that recently had its mastermind, Dennis Holland, shipped off to Adirondack, it wasn’t too surprising to see the Gulls playing their lowest-scoring game of the season. It contrasted sharply to their last home game, where they were on the losing end of a game where a season-high 15 goals were racked up.

An even second period produced no scoring, the first time the Gulls had been involved in a scoreless period since Jan. 19.

“We didn’t give them very many chances,” O’Connell said. “It’s fine to get a point out of (the game), but this was a good game for us and we deserved better.”

The Gulls owned the third period. Center Darcy Norton, on a breakaway from center ice, scored the third-period goal that brought the Gulls to 1-1. During that time and in the first 15 minutes of the period, the Gulls outshot Kalamazoo 11-1.

Norton’s goal was the Gulls’ first short-handed score since Jan. 9.

Mike Sullivan appeared to have scored the go-ahead goal for the Gulls, but referee Rob Martel disallowed it, ruling it had hit the left post. A replay convinced Gulls officials that it was a good call.

Wings’ goalie Jarmo Myllys, a member of Finland’s 1988 Olympic team, stopped 33 of 34 Gulls shots on goal.

Reimer stopped 17 of 19 Kalamazoo (34-17-0) shots.

The Gulls could have entered the third period trailing even further.

The defense, maligned at times during the season, kicked it up a notch in the first period.

Reimer pulled out two sweet saves out of nowhere, and Bob Jones, on a 3-on-1 Wings breakaway, broke up the potential scoring drive.

Gulls Notes

The Gulls are now 2-21-3 when trailing after two periods and haven’t come back in that situation since Dec. 26, when they rallied from a 2-1 deficit to defeat Phoenix, 3-2. . . . The Gulls have won back-to-back games only twice since Nov. 26. . . . A day after losing top scorer Dennis Holland, the Gulls released another forward, Gord Walker, a former Canadian National team member. Walker joined the team Dec. 6 and was expected to add punch to an offense that had lost then top-scorer Brent Sapergia about the same time. Walker had only three goals--his last coming Nov. 26 at Peoria--and seven assists in 22 games. At his request, Walker won’t be traded. He has opted to sit out the rest of the season and return to Canada. . . . Eastern Feast: Going into Tuesday’s game, the Gulls are 0-3-1 against Eastern Division teams at home. Overall, they are 5-9-1. . . . Saturday is men’s and women’s Bikini Night. The Gulls play host to Kansas City.