CLARENVILLE — The ride is over for the Western Royals.
The Clarenville Caribous ousted the Royals from the Newfoundland Senior Hockey League playoffs with a 4-1 victory Sunday at the Clarenville Events Centre.
The Caribous, who got a split at the Hodder Memorial Stadium last weekend, clinched a playoff berth with three-straight wins on home ice.
Brad Crann, Ryan Desrosiers, Stephen Oates and Matthew Bragg with an empty-netter provided the offence for the Caribous in the clinching victory.
Mark Robinson was the lone marksman for the Royals, who could only muster two goals in three road games.
Meanwhile, the top-seeded Grand Falls-Windsor Cataracts will be facing elimination on home ice this weekend after the Eastlink CeeBee Stars won two games in overtime on home ice to take a 3-1 stranglehold on the best-of-seven semifinal affair.
Ray Dalton, with his second-straight winning goal in overtime, lifted the CeeBee Stars to a 2-1 victory over the Cataracts Sunday afternoon at the S. W. Moores Memorial Stadium.
Dalton was the hero one night earlier denting the mesh in overtime as the CeeBee Stars claimed a 3-2 overtime win in the pivotal Game 3 of the series.
Jordan Escott scored for the CeeBee Stars in regulation time Sunday.
Ryan Graham scored for the Cats.
Caribous 3, Royals 0 (Saturday night)
The Caribous scored a goal in every period and rode the stingy puckstopping of Jason Churchill in pushing the Royals to the brink of elimination with a commanding 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven semifinal series a lot of senior hockey fans could go the distance before the puck dropped in Game 1 of the series one week ago in Deer Lake.
Scoring champion Andrew Sweetland had a power-play marker in both the first and third periods of Saturday’s victory.
Dale Sullivan scored for the Caribous in the middle stanza as Churchill recorded the goose egg.
Caribous 4, Royals 1 (Friday night)
Roger Kennedy got the goaltending win in Game 3 Friday night with No. 1 puckstopper Jason Churchill unavailable for the game.
Mark Tobin gave the Royals a 1-0 lead in the first period, but the Caribous stormed back with four unanswered goals in the middle stanza to take a 2-1 lead in the series.
David Victor, Matt Bragg, Steve Yetman and Andrew Sweetland scored second-period goals for the herd.
CeeBee Stars 3, Cataracts 2 (OT)
Ray Dalton scored the winning goal in Game 3 into overtime to give the CeeBee Stars a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven semifinal affair.
Doug O’Brien and Colin Feehan scored power-play goals for the Harbour Grace squad in regulation time.
Andre Gill and Ryan Graham scored for the top-seeded Cats in regulation time.
