Shaking Late-Season Blues, Gulls Primed to Play Peoria : Hockey: Waddell hopes team can carry over momentum from final victory to best-of-seven playoff.

No words about it were uttered. Questions about it were brushed off. But the Gulls were struggling last week, and no one had a clue why.

The locker room grew quieter while the Gulls lost eight of 10 games going into their regular-season finale. On the horizon were the playoffs against the defending International Hockey League champion Peoria Rivermen.

The prospect of a Gull collapse played louder on peoples’ minds.

Then Saturday in Phoenix, with the final 20 minutes of 1991-92 ticking off the clock, the Gulls returned. They scored five goals in the third period to beat the Roadrunners, 6-4, and cap the season with 99 points and 45 victories.

By Monday, the Gulls acted like a team no longer burdened as they practiced for the final time before departing for tonight’s first-round playoff opener in Peoria. Heavy metal music once again blared from the dressing room, players joked around and Coach Don Waddell was an octave higher as he talked about how his team rebounded.

“It was a character game for us,” said Waddell, whose Gulls had lost their final three home games after winning 22 of their previous 28 at the Sports Arena. “We could have easily said, ‘Let’s wait for (the playoffs).’ Now the guys are really upbeat.

“This bursts the bubble and this gets us going in with the right attitude. We’re excited about it.”

After finishing with 68 points and missing the playoffs as an expansion team the year before, nobody predicted the Gulls would be in position to dethrone the IHL champs.

The Gulls went to training camp just over two weeks before the season with only four signed players. The ownership of the team was unstable and has changed twice since then. Waddell, who also serves as vice president and general manager, appointed himself as coach in late August after he failed to find a satisfactory replacement for Mike O’Connell.

They started the season 1-4, but then Waddell was able to mold a team that far exceeded even his own expectations, with a third-place finish in the West Division and a 45-28-9 record.

He signed an unknown Russian forward, Dmitri Kvartalnov, who finished with an IHL-leading 60 goals and 118 points. He signed journeyman center Len Hachborn, who produced a league-high 73 assists in 70 games and was third in points with 107. He stole an unsigned NHL draftee, Ray Whitney, who became a 19-year-old scoring phenom with 36 goals, 54 points in 63 games while centering the team’s second line.

But down the stretch, the Gulls lost nine in a row on the road before beating Phoenix. The team that tied Fort Wayne for the most goals (340) was 2-6-2 in 10 games, averaging only 1.5 goals in those eight defeats.

With 10 games left, the Gulls and Peoria were deadlocked in a battle for second place with 89 points each. Peoria closed strong, picking up 16 points and clinching second place--and home-ice advantage in the seven-game series against the Gulls--with two games to spare.

“I respect Peoria,” Waddell said, “but I think we’re as good as they are. There’s no reason why we can’t go in there and beat them. If the whole series were played five-on-five, with no penalties, we’d beat these guys. We’re a better team, five-on-five.”

“It’s just all mental right now,” said defenseman Alan Hepple, the only Gull to play all 82 games and one of only four players signed by the Gulls before training camp. “We needed a win bad, on the road . . . anywhere. The guys were real excited after (the Phoenix victory), the most excited I’d seen in a long time.”

Hepple, the team captain and club’s top scoring defenseman with 41 points, said the Gulls probably lost their focus after Fred Comrie purchased the club, a move said to ensure franchise stability.

Comrie officially took ownership March 4, the same time rumors of the Gulls’ interest in Eric Lindros, the top choice in the 1991 NHL entry draft, surfaced. The Gulls wound up signing free-agent NHL goalie Sean Burke, with Comrie claiming he was “shocking the hockey world” and boosting the club.

“That might have distracted us,” Hepple said. “It might have been the in back of guys’ minds, though they might not have said anything publicly about it. We were playing so well. We were in second place.”

The day after the Gulls offered Lindros a contract, the players dropped a note on Waddell’s desk, suggesting the money be used to sweeten their contracts. It was done in good humor, but it was a statement, no less.

“It’s a 20-man game,” Hepple said. “Take care of the guys that have been here the whole year. Look after them and they’ll take care of you.

“And it’s not Sean’s fault. He came in and it created a tough situation with Hoffy and Knick (goalies Bruce Hoffort and Rick Knickle) playing so well.”

Knickle (28-13-4, 3.47 goals-against average) finished with the most victories of any goalie in the IHL this season. Hoffort, on loan from the Philadelphia Flyers (11-9-4, 3.62 GAA), hasn’t played since Feb. 29. But the spotlight will be on Burke, who has a 4-2-1 record with a 2.40 goals-against average.

“I can’t speak for the rest of the guys, because I haven’t been here for the whole 82 (games), but I think the effort’s been there all along,” Burke said. “I’ve seen an effort every night.”

Comrie’s arrival was a bonanza, bringing a substantial increase in promotion and an increase of nearly 3,000 per game in attendance. The Gulls played .500 the rest of the season.

“We clinched a playoff spot so long ago (March 7), I can’t remember when it was,” Hepple said. “Maybe we got a little complacent and thought it was going to be easy.”