Aces End Bulls Inaugural Season in Game 5

DALY CITY – The San Francisco Bulls final game was a mirror of their inaugural season: they stumbled, they fought back, they fell just short.

            The Alaska Aces eliminated the Bulls from the Kelly Cup playoffs on Saturday, winning Game 5, 4-3 at the Cow Palace, bringing the team’s first season to an unwelcome finish.

            “Real sad right now, real emotional; it’s hard to believe it’s over,” Head coach Pat Curcio said. “I go back to the day almost two-and-a-half, three years ago, when we came up with the name to where we are today and to have it end like this – it’s tough.”

            For the second-straight game, the Bulls jumped on the board first when Bryan Cameron ended the team’s power-play drought in the opening period. The Bulls entered the game 2-for-52 with the man advantage against the Aces this season, but then Cameron put the puck over goalie Gerald Coleman’s shoulder after Dean Ouellet found him alone in front of the net at the 15:34 mark of the opening frame.  

            “They’re the best PK in the league. They put on a lot of pressure, it’s real hard to set up,” Ouellet. “We had good puck movement there, trying to find some options. Cameron was open there and he put it top shelf.”

            But the Aces evened it up before the end of the period and the teams headed to the locker room tied 1-1.

            The Bulls appeared to take a 2-1 lead early in the second when Dylan King fired the puck into an open net from the middle of the left circle. But instead, referee JM McNulty sent Jordan Morrison to the penalty box for goalie interference, contending that he’d knocked Coleman off his feet while skating through the crease.

            But Curcio insisted that Coleman fell while trying to push Morrison. 

            Less than two minutes later, Bobby Hughes notched his second goal of the game and the Aces pulled ahead 2-1.

            “It was a crazy turn of events,” Curcio said.

            The Aces added another goal roughly seven minutes later and extended the lead to 4-1 early in the third period. But just like in Game 4, the Bulls battled back from a three-goal deficit, making it a one-goal game with less than two minutes to play.

            First, Peter Sivak scored his first goal of the playoffs, floating the puck over Coleman’s shoulder while a screen blocked his vision. Then, Ouellet scored on a one-timer when Cameron fed him a pass from behind the net into the slot, making the score 4-3 with 1:38 to play.

            “Against them you don’t have much time, you’ve got to shoot it right away,” Ouellet said. “You’ve got to try to work one-timers and quick shots because they’re going to get in those shooting lanes.”

            But the Aces iced it with an empty netter 36 seconds later, ending the first season of San Francisco Bulls hockey.

            After the players shook hands, the Bulls raised their sticks at center ice and saluted the fans. They lingered on the ice, taking in the last cheers of the 2012-13 season before stepping into the locker room.

            “We had stretches where we didn’t win seven or eight games in a row and they still managed to come out. You’ve got to thank them for that,” Morrison said.

            Ouellet said the team enjoyed its time in city by the bay.

            “I think San Francisco is a great city, it’s amazing for us,” he said. “It’s amazing being here, it’s a really great experience.”

            Morrison said the future his bright for the franchise with the culture that's been established in the locker room.

            “I’ve played on a lot of teams throughout my career, junior, professional, university and this is one of the best groups of guys I’ve ever been with on and off the ice. Just a treat to be around,” he said. “There’s no clicks in the room, everyone was friendly with each other. You didn’t mind going to the rink in the morning, just a great environment to come to every day.”

            Curcio said the fans response after the game and throughout the season was surreal.

            “To know that we created something that has so much passion and there’s such a culture that goes with it – that’s all we can ever ask for,” he said. 

Bulls Fall in Shootout at Cow Palace in Game 4

DALY CITY – Despite five goals, the San Francisco Bulls failed to pull even with ECHL’s top defensive team in Game 4 of their first round Kelly Cup playoff on Friday.

            The Bulls battled back from a three-goal deficit in the third period, but they failed to score the equalizer against the top-seeded Alaska Aces, falling 6-5 at Cow Palace. With the loss, the Bulls now trail the Aces 3-1 in the best-of-seven game series.

            “Five goals should usually win you a hockey game, right?” Captain Scott Langdon said. “You’ve just got to score more goals than they do and that’s the bottom line.”

            The Aces entered the game 36-0-6 when scoring the first goal, but the Bulls opened the scoring when Dean Ouellet jumped on a Nick Mazzolini turnover on the penalty kill, fed the puck up to Christian Ouellet and then fired home his rebound on a 2-on-1.

            Christian Ouellet finished the game with three assists.

            “He’s a good penalty killer, he’s good on the power play, he’s good five-on-five,” Head coach Pat Curcio said. “He’s a smart player.”

            But the Aces evened it up on a breakaway at the 1:55 mark of the second period.

Then, less than four minutes later, the Bulls and Aces combined to score three goals in 1:26. First, the Aces jumped ahead 2-1 when goalie Thomas Heemskerk lost a puck that redirected off the back wall in his feet and kicked it in. But the Bulls responded 22 seconds later when Kris Belan knocked home a rebound from a Mark Isherwood shot and the Aces regained the lead 1:09 after that when Clackson found the top-right corner on a quick snapper off a faceoff.

            At that point, Curcio pulled Heemskerk for Taylor Nelson. He said the second Aces goal fueled the decision.

            “We can’t afford those in the playoffs. That one goal made the difference in the hockey game,” he said. “I’m not blaming Heemer, I’m not blaming our defenseman. But the reality is that’s a goal that shouldn’t go in our net …that kind of put me on edge and then they scored two shifts later off the faceoff. I thought, you know what, if we’re going to come back with Hemmer tomorrow, let’s give him a rest and see if Nellie can steal a game.”

            Curcio also pulled Heemskerk in Game 1 and the 23-year-old netminder returned in Game 2 to pitch the first shutout in franchise history.

            The Bulls responded, tying it up  3-3 exactly four minutes later when Jordan Morrison skated around the Aces defense and put the puck past goalie Mark Guggenberger. But the Aces took a 4-3 lead into intermission when a B.J Crum shot from the point hit a Bulls player in traffic and found the back of the net.

            The Aces added two more goals in the first seven minutes of the third, extending the lead to 6-3. But the Bulls fought back, scoring two goals in a 20-second span with less than five minutes to play.

            Dean Ouellet scored the first goal on a hard wrist shot after receiving a pass from Bryan Cameron in the slot and Falite scored the second, squeaking the puck in between Guggenberger and the left post.

            “It was a beautiful goal by Dean Ouellet and Cameron and Sivak and then right back later Falite comes back and scores again,” Curcio said. “That was a hard-working goal, that was a blue-collar goal. Those are the kind of goals we love.”

            Despite the loss, Curcio said his young team’s resiliency against the league’s top team impressed him.

            “We’ve got the making of a good hockey team,” he said. “They’re learning to create a culture, an identity and that’s what we’ve been trying to do all year.”

            The Bulls and Aces will return to action at the Cow Palace for Game 5 on Saturday. Langdon said the pressure shifts to Alaska as they try to advance to the next round.

            “The fourth game is always the hardest one to win for teams,” he said. “If we play like we did at the end of the game there, we could be going back to Alaska for six and seven.”

  

Mistakes Cost Bulls Against Near-Perfect Aces in Game 3

DALY CITY – A pair of second-period mistakes sunk the San Francisco Bulls in their first round Kelly Cup Playoff series against the ECHL’s top team.

            The Alaska Aces took a 2-1 series lead over the Bulls at the Cow Palace on Thursday, bouncing back from Thomas Heemskerk’s Game 2 shutout with a 4-1 win.

            “We can’t make mistakes,” Head coach Pat Curcio said. “That team makes minimal mistakes and that is what it takes.”

Alaska jumped on the board first when Alex Hudson beat Heemskerk with a quick snapper on the rush at the 2:58 mark of the second. The Aces entered the game with a 34-0-6 record when notching the first goal.

Curcio said his team was slow to change lines on the play, which enabled the scoring chance.

“We didn’t change, which is typically what happens, and they changed on the way down,” he said. “The fresh guy got the puck at the top of the circle, he shot and it went in.”

Steve Ward added to the Aces lead less than four minutes later when he fired the puck under the crossbar from the high slot after the Bulls failed to clear the zone.

“We had the puck coming up the wall, we didn’t clear the puck and that failed clearing attempt ended up in our own net,” he said.

            The Bulls entered the second intermission down 2-0 against the ECHL’s second-stingiest team (the Aces allowed 172 goals this year, one fewer than South Carolina) and the odds were stacked against them. In the last three years, the Aces are 116-0-7 when leading after two periods of play.

            The climb steepened roughly six minutes into the third when Nick Mazzolini found a few inches of daylight between Heemskerk’s right shoulder, the crossbar and the right post to make the score 3-0. Again, the Bulls faced discouraging odds; the Aces took the ice with a 38-2-2 record when scoring more than three goals.

            The Bulls got on the board at the 8:43 mark of the third period when Jordan Morrison threw the puck into the blue paint from behind the net and it redirected off an Aces player past goalie Mark Guggenberger.

Peter Sivak, who was playing his first game in a Bulls jersey after a stint with the Worcester Sharks, picked up an assist on the play as did rookie forward Christian Ouellet.

            Sivak made his presence felt in his return, creating scoring chances nearly every time he stepped on the ice.

“I thought he worked really hard. He won battles on the wall and he kept pucks alive,” Curcio said. “I think he learned that you can’t just try to beat guys one-on-one, you have to learn to play the game the right way.”

 Other than the two costly mistakes, Curcio said his team played a strong game.

“We just lost to a good hockey team,” He said. “We probably played a better all-around game than the game we won 1-0.”

The Bulls coach credited the Aces for playing structured hockey, blocking shots and limiting their giveaways. He said Heemskerk will need to be near perfect against a team that features two goalies with goals-against averages below 2.25.

          “They have the two best goaltenders in the league and they’ve played consistently all year – that’s the difference,” he said, adding: “Heemer gave us that opportunity on Friday, but tonight we couldn’t score three goals to help him out.”
            The Bulls and Aces will return to action at the Cow Palace for Game 4 on Friday.

Giants Boosting Social Media Experience Inside AT&T Park

As the Giants get set to defend their World Series title, the front office is ensuring that the team also remains No. 1 in the social-media world.

The experience of attending a baseball game at AT&T Park will be even more interactive this year with increased Wi-Fi capacity, the addition of mobile device and tablet charging stations, and the unveiling of baseball’s first social-media center.

“Giants baseball is so perfect for social media,” social-media director Bryan Srabian said. “It gives us this unique opportunity to be leaders in that space.”

The Giants are first among Major League Baseball teams in Instagram and Google+ followers, and they rank third on Twitter with nearly 400,000 followers and fourth on Facebook with more than 1.6 million likes.

But when it comes to Twitter trends, #sfgiants blows the competition out of the water. In 2012, the team’s hashtag ranked fifth among sports trends, trailing #nfl, #nascar, #mlb and the Olympics.

The team’s popularity in the Twittersphere inspired the idea for a social-media center, where fans will be able to read the most entertaining tweets, see the best pictures and appreciate the massive volume of activity that’s taking place in and outside the ballpark in real time on a matrix of high-definition televisions.

The social-media center will be in the former Build-A-Bear store located behind the outfield bleachers, and it also will feature a Peet’s Coffee bar along with more high-definition TVs showing game action.

Srabian said the new addition, which will open on a homestand in late April or early May, will boost Giants content on Twitter and Instagram and give fans who are unfamiliar with social media an opportunity to experience it at the ballpark.
“Hopefully it gives them a reason [to use social media] and it adds to the experience,” he said.

But more activity means drained batteries, so the team added 10 charging stations where fans will be able to juice up their smartphones and other mobile devices.     

The Giants also increased the ballpark’s Wi-Fi capacity, more than doubling the number of antennas from roughly 350 to 760.

Senior vice president Bill Schlough said it’s the biggest upgrade the park has experienced in 14 years.

“We had to, because it’s really becoming part of the experience,” he said.

Belt Poised For Breakout Year

Melky Cabrera’s offensive production seemed impossible to replace as news broke in August that he had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. With 159 hits, 84 runs and a .907 OPS sucked out of the order, the Giants looked incapable of keeping pace with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who held a one-game lead in the National League West.

Of course, Bruce Bochy’s club, which returns to town tonight for the exhibition Bay Bridge Series, went on to win the World Series thanks to the timely contributions of several unexpected heroes.

But as Opening Day 2013 approaches, the Giants still haven’t picked up a bat with the “Melk-man’s” punch, and it might not matter because they have a stick at first base that’s ready to be unleashed.

As spring training wraps up, every indication suggests that the “Baby Giraffe” is ready to break out of his cage this year.

Brandon Belt probably won’t ever live up to his billing as “the next Buster Posey,” but he should become a dependable run producer in the middle of the order.

The first sign is the way Belt knocked the cover off the ball in the Cactus League. He led San Francisco in batting average (.448), home runs (8), RBIs (19), slugging percentage (.925) and OPS (1.397). Skeptics will remind you that he put up healthy numbers in spring training last year (.308/.608/1.028), but the case for Belt extends beyond the Arizona desert.

While Posey comparisons are unfair, Belt was tagged with the label for a reason: he tore through the minors in one season (2010), hitting a combined .352 at Class A, AA and AAA, after batting .321 with 14 home runs and 108 RBIs in 124 career games at the University of Texas.

But Belt’s debut at age 22 on Opening Day 2011 might have been premature. He struggled through his rookie campaign, hitting .225 in 187 at-bats. During a 4-for-47 stretch last July, many questioned whether he was truly big-league material.

Belt hit bottom on July 22 when he admitted to reporters that he was struggling mentally and Bochy replaced him with Pablo Sandoval at first base the next game. But Belt jumped back in the lineup a few days later after Panda strained his hamstring and he found his stroke, hitting .333 in the last two months of the season.

The experience should help Belt reach his potential this year. It taught him the value of taking extra cuts in the cage and how to get out of his head when he’s struggling, and to approach his at-bats with his teammates in mind rather than wallowing in his own insecurities.

Most importantly, he’s been through it now, so when he hits the skids, he knows how to claw his way out without getting sucked into the quicksand.

It’s easy to forget that Belt’s 25th birthday is still 23 days away. He’s just starting to grow into his cleats.

The big Texan isn’t Posey, and he probably isn’t going to put up those Melky numbers, either. But he should give the lineup the pop it needs this year without having to trade the farm for a big bat in July.

Bulls Scoring Woes Continues in Loss to Steelheads

DALY CITY – As the regular season near its conclusion, the San Francisco Bulls bats are going cold, scoring only three goals in their last five games.

           

  The Idaho Steelheads (45-19-7) blanked the Bulls (24-38-9) for the second straight time at the Cow Palace this week, winning 5-0 on Fan Appreciation night Friday.

            

“We lost our first [game] and we lost our last one,” Head coach Pat Curcio said. “We need to find a way to win some of these games where the crowd’s here and all the energy. It really, really, really hurts tonight.”

          

  Tommy Grant, Bryan Cameron and Tristan King returned to the lineup against the Steelheads, but the Bulls couldn’t put the puck past goaltender Chris Rawling, who stopped 23 shots to earn a shutout in his professional hockey debut.

           

  But with Dean Ouellet (52 points) likely to return for the playoffs, and the fate of several players (Peter Sivak, Yanne Gourde, Daniil Tarasov) up in the air, Curcio said the Bulls need to treat their series with the Alaska Aces as a new beginning.

            

“I don’t like to look at it that way, but we have no choice,” Curcio said. “Unfortunately, that’s the way she goes. It doesn’t matter, I guess, if we’re winning or losing now. It’s going to count when we start in Alaska next week.”

            

The Steelheads opened the scoring at 10:43 of the first period when Ben Ondrus tipped a pass from former-Bull Rylan Galiardi over goalie Taylor Nelson’s shoulder. Adrian Foster made it a 2-0 with less than five minutes to play in the second period when he knocked in a Galiardi shot that hit the crossbar and bounced out in front of the net.

            

The game was out of reach early in the third period when the Steelheads scored back-to-back-to-back goals by the 6:04 mark.

            

If the game had a silver lining, it was the performance of the penalty kill, which shutdown nine of 10 Steelheads power play opportunities.

            

“The PK was great,” Curcio. “If there is any positive you can take out of tonight, it’s that it’s getting primed for the playoffs.”

            

But unfortunately, Ian Schultz left the game with what appears to be a broken ankle, putting a swift end to the Belan-Morrison-Schultz checking line.

            

“Things just keep getting tougher for us, but we’ve got to find a way,” Curcio said.

            

The Bulls did receive some good news: Thomas Heemskerk is rejoining the club and will start in goal for the team’s final game of the season against the Bakersfield Condors on Saturday.

            

Curcio said he expects Heemskerk to be the No.1 goalie heading into the playoffs.

            

“He started to get really hot, then he got really sick [in January]. It’s been a crazy season of ups and downs and we haven’t had much consistency,” he said.     

            

The Bulls handed out a few awards after the game. Dylan King was the most improved player, Kris Belan was rookie of the year, Scott Langdon was the defensive player of the year, Peter Sivak was the offensive player and Dean Ouellet earned the MVP award.

            

“Dean really stepped into a position where he took the leadership in his own hands, especially with the young guys,” he said. “There were a lot of French guys who were here and he did a phenomenal job getting those guys acclimated to a professional lifestyle.