RoughRiders’ season comes to an end

The Dubuque Fighting Saints got consecutive go-ahead goals exactly four minutes apart late in the second period and ended the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders' season with a 7-3 win Saturday night in Game 4 of the USHL Eastern Conference semifinals at Mystique Ice Center.

Cedar Rapids was hoping to get the series back home for a deciding Game 5, but that's not happening. Instead a downtrodden group of players lamented it being the last time they'll all play together.

Some will move on to college, some will be back in Cedar Rapids, some might end up elsewhere. Who knows?

Tears told the story.

'We put a lot of work in all year,” goaltender Danny Tirone said, between wiping his eyes. '”When that final buzzer rang, thinking it's over … The kind of team we are, we didn't want to accept that. We never quit, we played for each other, we love each other. Right now, it's hard to deal with … It's tough to know we're not coming to the rink tomorrow.”

'Honestly, it's hard to fathom,” said defenseman Clark Kuster. 'Looking around at the locker room, you might never see some of these guys ever again. It's a little bit heartbreaking because you spent this entire year working toward the same goal, working side by side.”

Sometimes you're just not meant to win, which you could theorize with this one. How else do you explain light-scoring Saints defenseman Josh Elmes scoring twice, matching his regular-season total with Dubuque.

He flung a puck from the blue line midway through the first period that appeared to hit the stick of a RoughRiders player and then into the top left corner of the net past Tirone. After Andrew Oglevie scored on a penalty shot early in the second period to tie it for Cedar Rapids, Elmes was the trailer on a 3-on-2 break in the second, taking a feed from teammate Seamus Malone and beating Tirone stick side for a 2-1 lead.

Jason Ford's rebound goal at 15:48 made it 3-1 and seemed to cut the heart out of the RoughRiders.

'The game was coming to me,” Elmes said. 'The puck came, I kept shooting it, and they were going in.”

'We never quit,” Tirone said. 'We weren't going to stop no matter what the score was.”

Robby Darrar and Malone added goals 1:10 apart early in the third for a 5-1 Dubuque lead. Freddy Tiffels scored a power-play goal midway through the third after Dubuque goalie Kevin Reich intentionally tripped a Riders player skating from behind the net.

Reich had the last laugh, rebounding from a poor Game 2 in which he was pulled after a period with back-to-back strong outings. He posted a shutout in his team's 1-0 Game 3 win Friday night and made some good saves when Game 4 was in the balance.

The RoughRiders could not take advantage of five power plays when it was a tied or one-goal game, and that was significant. Jared Privitera (Dubuque) and Andrew Poturalski (RoughRiders) added goals in the final five minutes, then Darrar scored into an empty net with 1:27 left for the final margin.

'I just told them I'm real proud of the season that they had,” said RoughRiders Coach Mark Carlson. 'The guys battled an awful lot of adversity this year, including here in the playoffs. They came together as a team overall. It was a great season for the guys.”

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