Dubuque sweeps the RoughRiders

CEDAR RAPIDS – You can't say they didn't leave it all on the ice. Excuse the double negative there.

The Cedar Rapids RoughRiders played their best game of this USHL playoff series Saturday night at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena. But it still wasn't enough to save their season.

The Dubuque Fignting Saints gave them one final punch, and this one knocked them out, taking Game 3 and the series, 2-1.

It's always sad to see a hockey locker room after a team has been knocked out of the playoffs. There is so much time invested by these guys.

Tears abound, everyone sits at their dressing stalls, refusing to take the uniform off. That was the scene here.

'It's hard to describe how this feels,” said Riders winger Andrew Gaus. 'These are my brothers for eight months. They're more than family. You spend every day with them for six hours, seven hours. You eat dinner with them. I'm so proud of every single person, every player in this organization. This is probably the worst feeling in the world … It's tough to swallow this will be the last time I'll be with these guys wearing a RoughRiders jersey.”

'I'm proud of the season the guys had,” said RoughRiders Coach Mark Carlson. 'I was proud of the way we played tonight. It was a heck of a hockey game. A bounce here or there made the difference.”

Dubuque just seemed to own the RoughRiders this season, for whatever reason. They won eight of 10 regular-season games and all three postseason games between the teams.

The Riders claimed that never got into their heads.

'No, not at all,” Gaus said. 'That wasn't a factor. We didn't get some bounces and things. Give credit to them because they played well. I'm proud of our guys.”

'They're a good hockey team,” Carlson said. 'I thought the last two nights, they were dead even hockey games.”

It was the most elemental hockey play there is that put Dubuque on the scoreboard first early in the second period. Nathan Sucese won a faceoff in the RoughRiders zone, with the puck coming back to the left point to defenseman Hayden Shaw.

Shaw threw a shot at Riders goalie Ben Blacker, who made the stop. But he couldn't control the rebound, lunging at it but being beaten to the puck by Dubuque's Trey Dodd, who dove and poked it into the open net.

Evan Smith had what turned out to be the winning goal just 1:23 into the third. At the side boards, Shaw threw a puck toward the net that Smith tipped over Blacker's shoulder.

Joe Wegwerth got Cedar Rapids back into the game at the 6:48 mark, beating his check on a 2-on-2 rush, taking a neat centering pass from Gaus, deking and backhanding one top shelf past Dubuque goalie Jacob Nehama. The Riders had two power-play opportunities to try and tie things after that but couldn't score.

Jiri Fronk had a shot glance off the crossbar on the final man advantage. No puck luck.

'There were bits and pieces of every game in this series where we had our moments, but I thought we played a full 60 tonight,” said Gaus. 'A lot of credit to them. They beared down and kept us off the score sheet for a lot of this series.

Cedar Rapids went 39-21-0 in the regular season and finished second in the Eastern Conference. Another good season, another playoff season.

'We won, what, 39 games?” Carlson said. 'That's a lot of wins in this league. You are going to have your ups and downs as a team, you are going to have your ups and downs as a player. We had some of those, and that's normal. But we had a tremendous season.”

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FIRST STAR – Hayden Shaw (Dubuque): Assisted on both goals, was huge in this series.

SECOND STAR – Evan Smith (Dubuque): Had game-winning goal early in third period on deft tip.

THIRD STAR – Joe Wegwerth (RoughRiders): Lone goal for Cedar Rapids.

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