Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Two teams, one spot. Who wants it?
Six of the Pacific Division’s seven playoff berths have been claimed. One is left, and that fight is down to the Tucson Roadrunners and the Bakersfield Condors.
Tucson holds a two-point edge on Bakersfield, 72-70, going into play tonight. Both teams have two games remaining. The Roadrunners will stay home this weekend for games tonight and Saturday against the Colorado Eagles. Bakersfield hosts the Henderson Silver Knights tonight before completing the teams’ home-and-home series Saturday.
The Roadrunners control their fate: Win one of their two games, and they move on to the Calder Cup Playoffs.
Bakersfield’s path is trickier: Even if the Condors sweep the Silver Knights, they’ll need Tucson to stumble.
The seventh-place finisher will hit the road to face the second-place team in a best-of-three first-round series next week. Right now, that’s the Abbotsford Canucks, but that’s far from a done deal. Abbotsford and Ontario are even with 88 points (the Canucks own the tiebreaker over the Reign, which is regulation wins). There’s also a chance that Abbotsford could catch Colorado for the division title.
Tucson has experience with that seventh-place spot from both sides. Two years ago, the Roadrunners just barely qualified for the Calder Cup Playoffs. Once in, however, they put a real scare into the second-place Coachella Valley Firebirds and took their first-round series a full three games against the eventual Calder Cup finalist. Last season, the second-place Roadrunners’ hopes for a long spring quickly dissolved as seventh-place Calgary took their series in a two-game sweep.
This year’s Roadrunners have gotten some substantial late help from their parent team, the Utah Hockey Club. With Utah’s season finished, goaltender Matthew Villalta and Tucson’s leading scorer Kailer Yamamoto have both rejoined the Roadrunners. Yamamoto, a seasoned NHL’er whose postseason experience includes 34 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, has 53 points (19 goals, 34 assists) in his 52 games with Tucson. Villalta is back with the Roadrunners coming off a major career moment, his first NHL win this past Tuesday night.
Home ice has been good lately to the Roadrunners as well. In their last six dates at Tucson Arena, they are 5-1-0; they swept the Condors in a pair of games two weeks ago.
For the Condors, who have not missed the playoff cut since 2018, this is their first real close call since 2015-16, when only four teams qualified in the Pacific Division. That year the Condors missed out on the postseason by just two points.
Bakersfield has gotten some roster help as well. Standout defenseman Connor Carrick is back after a brief recall – although fellow blueliners Josh Brown and Cam Dineen are still in Edmonton – and forwards Noah Philp and Derek Ryan are back from the Oilers as well. Another reason for optimism for the Condors? They have won four of their six meetings this season against Henderson and are 3-0-0 at home in the season series.
Tonight – and maybe Saturday – will settle the rest.
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
