Gulls swept by Eagles, playoff return ends with Ducks call-ups looming

The Gulls’ playoff return ended fast, and it ended in Colorado. The Eagles finished off San Diego with a 6-1 win in Game 2 on April 24 at Blue Arena, completing a best-of-three sweep after a 3-0 shutout in the opener and sending the Pacific Division’s No. 2 seed on to the semifinals.

San Diego scored only once in the series, a brutal finish for a club that had fought all the way into the bracket. The Gulls had grabbed the Pacific Division’s final available playoff spot on April 12 with a 7-3 win over Bakersfield, helped by Tucson’s 3-2 overtime loss to Colorado. It was their first Calder Cup Playoff appearance since the 2021-22 season, and the organization had promoted the run as a return to the postseason after a long wait. The club’s own message after elimination said it plainly: “We’ll be back.”

What stings for Anaheim-linked readers is how little runway this team got once it finally got there. The AHL’s Pacific Division First Round series E turned into a quick lesson in playoff efficiency, with Colorado blanking the Gulls in Game 1 and then putting the series away two nights later. San Diego’s late-season surge earned the entry, but the Eagles controlled the exit.

Now the bigger story shifts north to Anaheim, where the end of the Gulls’ season usually triggers the next layer of roster movement. With the Ducks’ NHL season nearing its end, Black Ace call-ups are looming, and the Gulls’ playoff roster becomes the most obvious pool of emergency depth and practice bodies. That matters because the players who just handled a brief but real postseason test are the ones most likely to get the first look when Anaheim starts sorting out its late-season needs.

The Gulls are done for now, but the organizational clock is not. San Diego’s spring ended with a sweep, yet the next phase for the Ducks is already starting to take shape.