The Cedar Rapids RoughRiders suffered a damaging 4-2 loss to the Dubuque Fighting Saints in a USHL game before 3,129 fans at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena Saturday night.

The loss dropped the RoughRiders three points behind Youngstown in the race for the Eastern Conference title with seven games left in the regular season.

Dubuque poured in four straight goals in the second period to grab a 4-0 lead. Seamus Malone scored three of those goals for the Fighting Saints for a hat trick.

Ross Colton put Cedar Rapids on the board with a power-play goal in the final seconds of the second stanza. Erik Foley made it 4-2 at the 14:22 mark of the third period when the RoughRiders had an extra attacker on the ice, but the home team could not get any closer.

Ryan Larkin stopped 39 shots in goal for Cedar Rapids.

Youngstown beat Waterloo Saturday night and leads the Eastern Conference with a 35-13-5 record for 75 points. The RoughRiders are in second place with a 36-17-0 record for 72 points. Dubuque is in third place with a 31-18-4 mark for 66 points.

Dubuque      0  4  0 - 4
RoughRiders  0  1  1 - 2

DUB - Seamus Malone (Robby Jackson, Hayden Shaw)
DUB - Robby Jackson (power play) (Hayden Shaw, Wyatt Ege)
DUB - Seamus Malone (Robby Jackson, Sasha Larocque)
DUB - Seamus Malone (Brett Boeing, Robby Jackson)
CR - Ross Colton (power play) (Jiri Fronk)
CR - Erik Foley (extra attacker) (Clark Kuster)