Vegas’ season far from total loss

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The Wranglers didn’t think their season would end this way. They thought they were good enough to win the ECHL championship.

Las Vegas finished the regular season with the best record (46-12-14, 106 points) in the 25-team league and tied a professional hockey record with 18 straight victories, including its first five playoff games.

Even after Idaho took a 3-1 lead over the Wranglers in the best-of-7 National Conference semifinals, there was reason to believe Las Vegas could win the series because the team did so last season in the same situation against the Steelheads.

But it didn’t happen. After blanking Idaho 4-0 in Game 5 Friday at the Orleans Arena, the Wranglers lost 1-0 in Game 6 Sunday at Boise, with the Steelheads scoring the winning goal with about a minute left.

“Lots of guys were a little bit shocked. When it ends, it ends real quickly,” Las Vegas coach Glen Gulutzan said. “We felt we could win anywhere. It’s not always do you have teams like that. Sometimes you have teams just waiting to be put out of the playoffs.

“I thought they played a little bit better than we did (Sunday), but when looking at the series as a whole, it (should’ve been) 3-3 going into Game 7, which we fully expected.”

The turning point in the series was a 4-3 home loss in Game 4, Gulutzan said.

“They got two kind of lucky goals, and we just didn’t respond from it,” he said. “I thought we outplayed Idaho in Game 4 and we should’ve won.

“We didn’t fizzle. I just think we ran up against a team that was very good throughout the series. They got a few bounces. We didn’t get them, and it cost us the series.”

All-Star goalie Mike McKenna said the series loss was tempered by everything the Wranglers accomplished during the season.

“Everybody was down, but at the same time we know we accomplished a ton this year. Not everybody gets a chance to win a championship,” he said. “We’re proud of ourselves for winning the Brabham Cup (for being the regular-season champion) and for the streak, so it wasn’t like a total loss. You can’t dwell on things.

“It would’ve been nice to win a championship, but we’re trying to make the most of it right now. I’m surprised because we expected to go all the way. We played as hard as we could every night and left it on the ice.”

The Wranglers, coming off a 53-13-6 season in which they finished within a point of Alaska for the best record in the league and lost to the eventual ECHL champion Aces in the second round of the playoffs, started this season 13-1-7 and 11-0-5 on the road.

They didn’t lose in regulation on the road until Dec. 9 and set a league record for fewest road losses in regulation with five (22-5-9). They compiled a nine-game winning streak from Nov. 16 to Dec. 8 before closing the regular season with 13 consecutive victories to edge Alaska by a point for the Brabham Cup.

“This is a team that, in January, myself and (assistant coach) Brent Bilodeau were worried about battling for the last playoff spot,” Gulutzan said. “To win the overall season, I’m very proud of these guys. We had only 12 losses, which is one less than the year before, and I never would’ve expected this from this hockey club.

“They overachieved. I just wish they could’ve overachieved in the playoffs.”

The Steelheads ended the Wranglers’ 18-game run with a 4-1 victory in Game 2, the first of three straight losses and four in five games. Las Vegas hadn’t lost three straight games in regulation until then.

“After having things go your way for 18 straight games, something was bound to go wrong at some point,” McKenna said. “Then it’s a matter of turning things around as quickly as you can. It took us three games. Had it taken us two, it might have been a different outcome.”

As for next season, Gulutzan said no player is signed, but he was working the phones Monday.

“The way I’ve dealt with (losing) the last two seasons, especially having teams I felt could’ve won a championship, is staying busy doing things around the office,” he said. “I’ve already made calls about players for next season. For me, the only thing that keeps my mind off losing out is to make sure I keep looking forward rather than back.”