Corridor Cross Checks: Iowa Heartlanders thrive on brutal 4-in-5 road trip

CEDAR RAPIDS — For the Iowa Heartlanders, it was four in five and time to thrive. Some more.

The ECHL club had a brutal schedule last week, with four games on the road in five games in three different cities.

The results were good: a 3-1 win at Kalamazoo, a 4-3 shootout loss at Fort Wayne, a 6-2 win at Wheeling and a 4-1 loss at Wheeling, in that order. The wins were the first two on the road this season for the surging Heartlanders, who are 8-5-2-1 for 19 standings points, one behind Toledo for first place in the Central Division.

Toledo has two games in hand.

“I am definitely pleased with where we’re at,” said Heartlanders Coach Derek Damon. “I felt like we left two points on the table on Sunday. That was a winnable game. But the guys played hard. We were down to five (defensemen), playing 11 (forwards) and five is a lot of stress on the back end.

“But I thought we acquitted ourselves very well.”

After a very slow start to the season that included Iowa being the last team in the ECHL to win a game, the Heartlanders have gone 8-1-0-1 in their last 10 games. That includes a six-game win streak that was snapped by Fort Wayne.

Damon said that he wasn’t especially discouraged by the first half-dozen or so games because he felt his club was competing well, just not quite getting it done. Obviously that has changed.

“It was frustrating in the sense that we weren’t getting the results that we wanted,” Damon said. “But I kept telling these guys to stick with the process. It’s getting over the hump and getting over the hump and learning how to win. It’s a new team. We had some returners from last year, but there were a lot of new guys.

“It’s finding a way to mesh together and finding a way to win in this league. And it’s not easy.”

First-year player Davis Koch leads Iowa with 10 goals in 16 games, with the offense generally being spread out, which is what Damon said he intended when he put together this season’s team. The Heartlanders are right back on the road this weekend, with a game Friday night at Cincinnati, Saturday night at Toledo and late Sunday afternoon at Toledo.

Cedar Rapids RoughRiders

The annual Thanksgiving set of games against the rival Waterloo Black Hawks didn’t go down quite as well for the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders as the turkey and stuffing probably did.

Waterloo swept, winning at home on Thanksgiving night, 2-0, and Saturday night at ImOn Ice, 4-3, in overtime.

Both games were highly competitive. Gavyn Thoreson scored late in the second period of the Thanksgiving night game for Waterloo, with Cedar Rapids putting on much more pressure in the third.

Grady Deering scored with just over a minute left to put it away for the Black Hawks, who got an 18-save shutout from Calvin Vachon, the grandson of former NHL goaltender and general manager and hockey hall of famer Rogie Vachon.

Ryan O’Connell and Elliott Groenewold had first-period goals in the Saturday game as the RoughRiders took a 2-1 lead. Waterloo scored early in the second and again early in the third for a 3-2 edge, with C.R.’s Riley Bassen banking a shot into the net off a Waterloo defender to tie it midway through the third period.

John Mustard’s sniped goal into the top half of the net 1:26 into OT won it for Waterloo and completed a hat trick for the forward. Cedar Rapids is 8-9-2-1 for 19 standings points, which is sixth of eight teams in the USHL’s Eastern Conference.

The RoughRiders host the Lincoln Stars on Friday night and the Sioux Falls Stampede on Saturday night, both games with a 7:05 opening faceoff.

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