ROANOKE, Va. – The Rail Yard Dawgs season comes to and end after a 6-2 loss to the Knoxville Ice Bears in Game Three of the first round series.
Knoxville’s Stephen Mundinger stopped 38-of-40 shots he faced in net to help the Ice Bears eliminate Roanoke in the best-of-three series. Carson Gallagher and Tommy Munichiello each had one goal and one assist, while Austyn Roudebush stopped 16-of-21 shots faced for Roanoke.
It was another quick start for the Ice Bears, as they scored within the first two and a half minutes for the second straight night. An early power play chance saw a shot ding the post before rookie Tyler Williams potted the puck at 2:23 to give Knoxville the early lead. That woke the Dawgs up from there, as Roanoke had a 22-10 shots on goal advantage in the period, including 20 of the last 23 combined chances on net. On Roanoke’s first power play, a centering feed by Brenden Stanko was jammed in by Gallagher at 14:06 to tie the game at 1-1. The Dawgs had another power play late in the frame that saw them hit two posts, and the score was still knotted up at the first intermission.
Knoxville locked the game down defensively in the second period, holding Roanoke to just five shots on net, including just one chance in the final 11 minutes of the frame.
In the third, the Dawgs continued to push to work back into the game, but it just never happened. Knoxville scored twice within two minutes and some change on a Derek Osik shorthanded breakaway at 13:41, and then McKinney’s second goal came in after Roudebush made the initial save but the puck bounced off of a Roanoke skate at 15:55. The Dawgs didn’t give up, as Munichiello made it 5-2 at 15:55 on a tight-range shot. An empty net finish by Soper made it a 6-2 result for the Ice Bears in the final minute, as Roanoke fell short of reaching at least the semifinals of the President’s Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2018. Roanoke went 1-for-4 on the power play, while the Ice Bears went 1-for-2 on their power play chances.