Photo courtesy of San Jose Barracuda. Kyle Criscuolo celebrates a goal with teammate Derrick Pouliot against the Gulls on January 20th.
By Titus Wilkinson (@TitusWisme)
SAN JOSE – On bay country night at Tech CU arena the Barracuda came out and played some great hockey beating the Gulls by a impressive 6-0 score.
It was a battle between two of the weaker teams in the pacific division. With the Barracuda currently sitting at seventh and Gulls sitting last in the division.
These are also two teams that lead the division in penalty minutes something that would come in to play pretty quickly in this game.
The first period got off to an exciting start for San Jose as they controlled most of the play.
Newcomer Kyle Criscuolo decided to endear himself to the Cuda fans by taking the puck right to the net and deking out Lukas Dostal to give San Jose a 1-0 lead.
After the goal San Diego took a penalty for hooking at the 10:48 mark of the first period. However the PK unit for the Gulls killed it off and kept the game close.
Not to long after the penalty things got feisty as Travis Howe and Montana Onyebuchi dropped the gloves.
Less than two minutes later the parade to the penalty box continued as three penalties were all dished out at once. Two going to the Gulls one for unsportsmanlike conduct and cross-checking and one Barracuda player went to the box as well.
Certainly there was no love lost between the two teams as the first period ended 1-0.
The shots at the end of the period finished 13-4 in favor of San Diego.
Not skipping a beat the second period just as well for San Jose as just 1:41 into the period the Andrew Agozzino scored his 11th goal of the season making it 2-0.
The goal mainly happened because of William Eklund who made it a beautiful cut behind the net and fed a pass to Agozzino who easily tapped the pass into the net.
The extra curriculars between the two teams was not over as Will Riedell and Dmitry Osipov also duked it out.
It did take a while for the grey and teal to strike again but 16:46 into the second Darren Brady did just that scoring his second of the season.
This time Max Veronneau made a nice pass across the ice to a streaking Brady who ripped a shot past Dostal to make it 3-0.
The end of the second was an interesting one with four misconducts being handed out, two to each team.
At the end of the second the shots still favored San Jose at 19-11.
The solid starts to periods continued for the Barracuda as a little over five minutes in the newcomer struck again as Criscuolo tallied his seventh goal of the campaign.
His second goal of the game was a little weirder as Veronneau fired a shot wide the puck rebounded off the boards and Criscuolo stuffed it in past Dostal.
The offensive wave of San Jose could not be stopped as just a few minutes later All-Star Thomas Bordeleau tipped home a great feed from Tristen Robins to make it 5-0.
Artemi Kniazev a little later saw fit to add on sniping one from the wing making it 6-0 and tallying his second of the year.
Not long after the goal another three misconducts were given out two to the Gulls and one to San Jose.
That brought the total penalty minutes between the two teams up to 125 penalty minutes on the night.
Kniazev’s goal did end up being the last goal of the game as Eetu Makiniemi held on to finish with a 20 save shutout.
The shots at the end of the game finished in favor of San Jose at 29-20.
The three stars of the game were 1st: Kyle Criscuolo 2nd: C.J. Suess 3rd: Eetu Makiniemi
San Jose’s next game will be on the road against the Silver Knights on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
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