LOVELAND — The Colorado Eagles’ dressing room door wasn’t opened for about 20 minutes after players came off the Budweiser Events Center ice Friday night. And when it did, the stunned Eagles mostly still were in uniform and frozen in their stalls, trying to come to grips with their 2-1 loss to the Bossier- Shreveport Mudbugs in Game 7 of the Central Hockey League’s championship series.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Eagles winger Kevin Ulanski, a former University of Denver standout. “I think we deserved better. We had a great team and went through a lot of stuff this year and came together and pushed it to Game 7. I thought we had what it took to get it done. I could just picture being in here, celebrating after Game 7, but it didn’t go our way tonight.”
The Mudbugs took a 2-0 lead with goals from Steven Crampton at 2:58 and Jeff Kyrzakos at 7:39 of the first period, and the Eagles’ 311th consecutive sellout crowd of 5,289 seemed stunned. Virtually the entire house standing and cheering for stretches of the third period didn’t spark a rally of sufficient magnitude, although Adam Chorneyko’s goal with 1:04 remaining in regulation closed the Eagles within one.
Goalie John DeCaro, who played collegiately at Alaska-Anchorage, finished with 26 saves for the Mudbugs.
When it was over, the Mudbugs got to celebrate and eventually skate around the ice with the CHL’s Ray Miron Presidents’ Cup. And the Eagles, stationed on their own blue line for the ceremony, had to watch the trophy being presented to the visiting team.
“I wish it was us,” said Eagles center Riley Nelson, the CHL’s most valuable player this season. “Those two early goals cost us. Give them credit. They played for a championship tonight, and they were successful.”
Game 7 was a stunning reversal in the wake of the Eagles’ 8-1 rout of the Mudbugs in Game 6 in Loveland on Wednesday, and prevented Colorado from winning its third league title in the expansion franchise’s eight seasons of existence.
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
