Gulls enter playoff debut believing they can challenge Colorado Eagles

San Diego had already shown Colorado what a difficult night in Blue Arena could look like. On March 17, the Gulls trailed by two late in the third period, tied it on Sasha Pastujov’s goal with 33 seconds left and then finished off a 6-5 shootout win on Nikita Nesterenko’s winner. That comeback was more than a regular-season escape hatch. It became the clearest proof that the seventh-seeded Gulls had real reason to believe the second-seeded Eagles could be pushed in a short series.

That was the backdrop as San Diego opened its best-of-three Pacific Division first-round series in the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs. The Gulls went 3-5-0-0 against Colorado in the regular season, their best head-to-head showing against the Eagles since 2020-21, and they won twice at Blue Arena, both by shootout. Those were also San Diego’s first two wins in Colorado since 2022. For a club that finished 33-26-8-4 with 78 points, its most successful regular season since 2018-19, the season series offered something the bracket does not: evidence that Colorado was not out of reach.

San Diego reached the postseason for the first time since the 2021-22 season, when it was swept by Ontario in the first round, and this time the Gulls entered under head coach Matt McIlvane with a different kind of expectation. They tied Tucson for seventh in the Pacific Division but grabbed the final playoff spot by virtue of more regulation wins, 27-21. That mattered in the standings, but it mattered even more in the way San Diego could frame its path. The winner of this series advanced to face Ontario in the Pacific Division semifinals, so the Gulls knew the trip would not get easier. They also knew a fast start could change how the whole bracket looked.

Ryan Carpenter’s message around the series was simple: respect Colorado, but trust the identity San Diego had built. McIlvane framed the berth as a major step for a team that had been shaped by change and adversity. That was not empty postseason language. In a best-of-three series, one road win can alter the math, and San Diego had already taken two in Colorado this season. The last Pacific Division seventh seed to upset a second seed in the playoffs was Calgary in 2024, when the Wranglers swept Tucson. The Gulls entered Game 1 knowing that history was rare, but not impossible.