That was a nice game by the Gulls, Solberg looked solid in his debut, responsible defensively and not afraid to engage physically which was good to see. Having only followed updates and not having seen him play a full game before, I was pleasantly surprised with some of his poise on the puck.
Moore was decent too given it was his first pro game, poise with the puck was a big thing I noticed. Looking forward to seeing him the rest of this season. Feel like he will be set up to have a big season with the Gulls next season as he should have a decent role.
You can see on the first goal the improvement in Luneau's willingness to engage physically, getting that puck free pretty much set up the goal. That's why it's important Luneau spends the year in San Diego just to get that consistent hockey and work on those sort of things.
I'll be interested to see what happens with the Gulls defense for next season. At the very least the Gulls defensive core for 25/26 is McKeown (AHL contract), Warren, Hinds, Solberg, Moore.....that's a very talented group already.
Then you have some wildcards in terms of Luneau, Dionicio, K.Smith all who could potentially be with San Diego next season too.
I'd like to see Anaheim sign some quality AHL forward depth too as we don't really have a lot coming up for next season. Bailey is an easy one and I'm hoping for Steeves from Toronto especially as he killed the Gulls in basically every match up all season.
A top 6 containing Carpenter (AHL contract), Bailey, Steeves, Pasta, Sidorov, Harkins would be a really solid line up.
Husso is pretty good, D also playing well. Gulls not bad, I like this team.
This team is more fun when it's not missing basically half of it's forwards. On the plus side, if Howe is playing you can get some absolutely unhinged moments with him defending teammates.
