Hachborn Sparks Gulls Past Roadrunners

Len Hachborn won’t forget the night of Feb. 29 in Phoenix that Sylvain Couturier nearly sliced his nose off with a skate. Hachborn needed reconstructive surgery; Couturier got a four-game suspension and didn’t play Friday.

But in a game that resembled a barroom brawl from the outset, Hachborn and the Gulls got the last laugh with a 6-2 victory over the Roadrunners in front of 8,293 at the San Diego Sports Arena.

The third-place Gulls (94 points) stayed one point behind Peoria in the race for the home-ice advantage in the first round of in the IHL’s West Division playoffs. Hachborn had two goals and added his IHL-leading 69th and 70th assists, his first assists this month. The Gulls snapped a three-game losing streak.

“It was good to score, but there was no payback,” Hachborn said, referring to the injury. “It didn’t enter my mind at all. It’s in the past. Maybe if it was the next game, it might have been a nice payback, but it’s forgotten.”

The Gulls blew the game open with two goals in the final three minutes of the second period and two short-handed goals in the third period. The game would have been much closer had a second-period goal by former Gull Soren True been allowed and Phoenix not been penalized for fighting.

But True is seeing a dismal end to a season that got off to such a promising start with the Gulls. He had 18 goals and 19 assists in 45 games with the Gulls before the New York Rangers traded him to the Kings in January. In 18 games with last-place Phoenix (61 points), True has only five points.

In the first period, True tried to avoid a fight with Gulls defenseman Steve Shaunessy (181 penalty minutes in 23 games), but Shaunessy dropped his gloves and pummeled True in the back of the head. In the second period, fans hurled debris at True during a stoppage in play, in which he was not involved.

But the goal that didn’t count added insult to injury for True, who said he never heard a whistle and accused referee Rob Martell of being indecisive in disallowing it.

“It’s not fun to get blown out of a game, especially here and especially with all the bull,” True said. “I used to play here. I like to play here; I like to play against these guys. But I don’t like all the bull.”

With the Gulls leading, 3-1, late in the second period, True got free in the slot, fired a shot past goalie Sean Burke and hoisted his fist.

But the goal wasn’t allowed because Phoenix’s Jim Maher had started a brawl back at the Roadrunners’ blue line. Forty minutes of penalties were doled out by Martell, including a game misconduct to Maher and a 10-minute misconduct to the Gulls’ Denny Lambert.

So the scored stayed 3-1. Twenty-one seconds later, the Gulls led 4-1, as Ray Whitney put a slap shot from the right circle past Darryl Gilmour for his third point of the night.

Whitney helped the Gulls take a 1-0 lead 3:11 into the game as Dmitri Kvartalnov put in the rebound of his shot from the slot on the power play. The goal snapped an 0-for-16 skid by the Gulls on the power play.

Later, with the Gulls controlling the puck in Phoenix’s zone, defenseman Kord Cernich scored his fifth goal from the right circle. The Roadrunners got back in it when Marc Saumier’s bullet from the left circle went through Burke’s pads to make it 2-1 midway through the second period.

But with 2:58 left, Whitney fed Hachborn with a backhand pass from the slot, and Hachborn squeezed the puck between Gilmour and the left post to make it 3-1. Then came the two-goal swing involving True that eventually turned the game into a rout.

The Gulls then buried Phoenix with two shorthanded goals, by Robbie Nichols and Hachborn, 18 seconds apart less than six minutes into the third period.

Gulls Notes

The Gulls will be back at the Sports Arena tonight, playing host to the Salt Lake Golden Eagles at 7:05. . . . Wing Larry Floyd will be lost for two to three weeks with a broken toe, suffered when he was hit in the foot by a puck in Phoenix last week. . . . Defenseman Dave Korol’s slow recovery from minor knee ligament surgery maybe nearly complete. He could return to action before the playoffs. But Gull Coach Don Waddell said the return of the club’s 1990-91 defensive MVP is not as crucial since it acquired former NHL defender Randy Hillier March 17.