Motivated Omaha hands RoughRiders their first loss

CEDAR RAPIDS – A team with four NHL draft picks that hadn't won a game, yet, three weeks into the United States Hockey League sMotivatedeason. That's what the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders faced Saturday night.

It proved to be a little bit too much.

'That was a really hungry team,” RoughRiders winger Andrew Gaus said, after Omaha got off its unexpected snide with a 2-1 win at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena. 'That's a very good team, so we knew we were going to get a real good battle out of it.”

Shane Gersich stuffed a puck through Riders goaltender Ben Blacker with 7:50 left for the winner. It was the second goal of the night for the 2014 Washington Capitals draft selection.

Gersich scored on the power play midway through the second period to make it a 1-1 game. Gaus had a short-hander midway through the first for the only goal of the night for the Riders (3-1).

That's the third shorty in the past two games for Cedar Rapids.

'It hit my pad, and I kind of lost sight of it. I thought I had it, but, obviously, I didn't,” said Blacker, who was strong again with 32 saves. 'The way they came out in the first period, they were right on us. They were making the hits, trying to do whatever they could to make it tough for us.”

'There are a lot of things we can learn from this game,” Riders Coach Mark Carlson said. 'Two really good teams there. We knew, for sure, they were a good team coming in here, there's no doubt about it. We knew it was going to be a battle, and it was. We can take some positives out of this and know there are some things we've got to get better at. This will be a good thing for us long term.”

Carlson said he liked his team's penalty kill, which had to face a pair of unique 4-on-3 challenges. Those are always more dangerous because there is more room for players to maneuver.

Omaha goalie Hayden Hawkey, a Montreal Canadiens draft pick with a great name, had been lit up in his four previous starts (4.99 goals against average, .828 save percentage) but was solid Saturday. Cedar Rapids pulled Blacker in the final minute and had the puck deep in the Omaha zone after a timeout with 30 seconds to go, but lost the faceoff and didn't really create a serious bid to tie.

'I thought we were good tonight, too,” Gaus said. 'The third period, they just had a couple of shifts where they outmuscled us there. They were just a little hungrier about a five to 10-minute span in the third. That's really where the game was won.”

The RoughRiders play their first road games of the season next week, at Madison and Waterloo. Their next home game is Oct. 25 against Sioux Falls.

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