PEORIA — The Peoria Rivermen were on the brink of their third championship in five seasons, but instead all they went home with Saturday was a T-shirt and a Finals series collapse never seen before in SPHL history.
The Rivermen dropped Game 5 of the SPHL President’s Cup Finals to the Evansville Thunderbolts on Saturday, 6-4, before 5,480 at Carver Arena.
That made Evansville a repeat league champion, and the Rivermen the first team in SPHL history to win the first two games of a best-of-5 Finals series and lose the championship. The 2025-26 series was the ninth in the five-game format.
“It just wasn’t in the cards for us,” said Rivermen head coach Jean-Guy Trudel in a somber Peoria locker room. “I feel like I let down our fans, our players, like I could have done more. When you’re a coach and the season ends in the Finals like this, yeah, it really hurts.
“We were a great story. We just didn’t get the ending we wanted. We made it to the championship game, in our arena, in front of a huge home crowd, storybook was waiting to happen. I’m not mad this year compared to last year, because I believe our guys gave it their all. I told them last year, ‘Don’t be sad, you guys didn’t work.’
“So there’s no one to be mad at. The other team got a little bit better goaltending these last two games. The way this ended hurt because I really wanted (Nick) Latinovich, and JM Piotrowski and all those older guys to go out with a championship together.”
The Rivermen playoff theme was “One More Push” emblazoned on their T-shirts, and reinforced by a stirring locker room speech delivering that theme by Bradley athletics director Chris Reynolds last month.
They rode that theme to their sixth Finals performance in 10 years.
Peoria knocked out wins in the first two games of the series, shifted to Evansville with a chance to sweep and celebrate, but lost both games, forcing Saturday’s Game 5 finale.
The fans arrived as early as 2:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. game, tailgating in the Civic Center parking lot.
Inside, at game time, a big crowd was jacked up and waiting through the national anthem and an immediate presence in the opening minutes.
“I had a chance to come back here and compete for a championship, that’s what I wanted to do,” said veteran Rivermen winger Jordan Ernst, whose inspired Game 5 included two goals. “I don’t regret the decision once. I think we gave everything we had here. We got knocked off last year by Evansville in the semis and it left a bad taste with us. We came back to finish the job, to try to get them.
“Even going up 2-0 in this series, we knew it was going to be a war. We sat in the room later wondering, did we take a breath? Did we relax and let them back in? We scored the first goal tonight, and they didn’t fold. They went up 5-2 on us and we didn’t fold, either. We were still telling each other, ‘We can do this.’ And we could have just quit, right? But everybody battled, everyone had belief.”
In the end, Evansville made a playoff series comeback that had never been done in the Finals. Peoria was left to own it.
“Honestly, there’s not a lot of words, right?” Ernst said. “It hurts.”
Evansville is a repeat champion
The Thunderbolts were on the brink of being swept by the Rivermen three days ago after losing the first two game of the best-of-5 series in Peoria.
The series shifted to Evansville, and they scratched out two wins there to tie it.
“Win the first five minutes,” Evansville head coach Jeff Bes said, when asked how he coached his team in that situation. “Then go on and try to win the next five. Be physical, be ready to go. I’m so proud of our guys because we do battle. No matter what, every year, we do battle. Everybody counts us out. Everybody doesn’t give us credit we felt we deserved as a group. But we believe in ourselves and in what we do.
“Are we the highest-scoring team? No. Are we the best defensive team? No. We just wanted to go out there and prove to everyone and compete in the battle and make the City of Evansville proud, make ourselves proud.”
Then came Game 5 on Saturday, and they skated onto the Carver Arena ice on even footing.
“Peoria is an unbelievable team, John-Guy Trudel is a great coach,” Bes said. “They got veteran leadership over there that has gone through this. We knew if we kept on it and kept doing what we could to be physical, get pucks deep behind their defense and get pucks to their goaltenders and get in his eyes … it’s incredible what Peoria has over there.
“So I’m really proud of my guys, just for sticking with it and believing.”
Evansville. Dynasty? Three straight titles next season?
“We’re just looking to win the first five minutes of next year,” Bes said.
Inside the Evansville locker room, the Thunderbolts celebrated, something that spilled out onto the ice later after 11 p.m. in Carver Arena, as they conquered the stage in Peoria one last time.
“We went through a lot of ups and downs through the season, but we always built a ladder and came out of the holes we were in,” Evansville captain Matthew Hobbs said. “We are a resilient group. I have a lot of leaders in that room that helped.
“The first two games (of the Finals, in Peoria) I don’t think we played like we wanted to. We knew we could have won. And once we got that first win, well, you don’t want to give the Thunderbolts momentum. We run off that.”
The Rivermen strike first
The Rivermen took a 1-0 lead at 7:01 of the first period when captain Alec Baer surged across the blueline, cut from the top of the right circle toward the middle of the slot, and sent a drive past goaltender Kristian Stead’s shoulder side.
The crowd erupted but the energy didn’t last long, as 39 seconds later Evansville tied it on a bad goal. Hobbs dumped the puck on net from the left point, and it bounced in on goaltender Latinovich, bounced off his pads and across the doorstep for an open-net finish from Isaac Champman.
The Rivermen fell behind 2-1 at 17:07 when Myles Abbate was able to muster a no-look pass off the endboards behind the net to Cameron McPhee as he arrived in the slot and punched past Latinovich’s stick side.
Now you see ’em, now you don’t
Peoria, which had only one shot in the final 12 minutes of the first period, snatched the momentum back quickly in the second and tied it on a slick move by Ernst.
Ernst took a pass at the top of the left circle, bluffed a big slapshot, then moved up and tucked a shot around Stead and inside the left post for a 2-2 tie at 2:56.
One of the most stunning collapses in Rivermen playoff history followed though, as Evansville rattled off three goals in a span of 6:19 and drove Latinovich out of the net.
Evansville veteran Scott Kirton received another pass off the endboards as he broke in uncovered in the slot and buried the puck for 3-2 at 4:14.
Then Hobbs, 38 seconds later, knocked a loose puck through Latinovich at the right post for 4-2.
The Rivermen sent SPHL Goaltender of the Year Jack Bostedt into the net, and Evansville extended its lead to 5-2 at 10:18 when Champman notched his second of the game off a two-on-one break from the left circle.
Trudel took his timeout after that.
One Last Push
The Rivermen were against the clock and the Evansville defense in the third period.
They scratched to within 5-3 at 5:46 when veteran Mike Galatt delivered a goal.
The Rivermen earned a power play and cashed in with a big drive from Ernst at 14:54, drawing them within 5-4 and setting the stage for a tense final few minutes.
But Peoria could not climb into a tie.
Hobbs was named SPHL Playoff MVP.
This story will be updated.
Dave Eminian is the Journal Star senior writer and sports columnist, and covers Bradley men’s basketball, the Rivermen and Chiefs. He writes the Cleve In The Eve sports column for pjstar.com. He can be reached at deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on X.com @icetimecleve.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: ‘Storybook was waiting’: Rivermen can’t finish SPHL title run, absorb stunning collapse
Reporting by Dave Eminian, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
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