PEORIA — College hockey’s most prestigious honor has a nominee from Peoria for the first time ever.
Peoria-born Dillan Bentley is among the 88 NCAA nominees for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award and will have a chance to advance as a finalist by virtue of online fan voting active now through March 8.
The Hobey Baker is college hockey’s version of the Heisman Trophy, presented each season to the best player in NCAA Division I.
Bentley, a 6-foot-4, 195-pound senior right wing at UMass-Lowell, grew up in the Peoria Youth Hockey Association program. He is an occasional visitor to the SPHL Peoria Rivermen and coach Jean-Guy Trudel, who has extensive ties to youth hockey and junior hockey via the Peoria Mustangs.
Bentley is a terrific player who has the potential to reach a high level of the pro game. The Peoria native has a career-high 10 goals – including two game-winners – plus seven assists in 21 games this season at Lowell. He has four multi-goal games. He has 25 goals and 25 assists in 108 career college games at UMass-Lowell, with nine power play goals and four game-winners.
Humble beginnings
Bentley started off as a house league player in the PYHA, and was quickly spotted by former Rivermen player Kevin Lune, who urged the player’s parents to move him up to travel team hockey.
They did, and he absorbed coaching from Trudel in youth hockey, then in the former NHLer’s TruHockey Academy and later from Trudel during a season of junior hockey with the Peoria Mustangs.
Bentley often credits those formative years with Trudel for where he is today. Trudel, on the other hand, has said Bentley has the potential to reach a high level of pro hockey and be the best player ever to come out of Peoria.
How to vote for Bentley
The 88 Hobey Baker candidates from 48 schools were selected and voted on by NCAA D-I coaches.
The NCAA’s Hobey Baker online site has a bio for each player, with a link to vote for him. Fans can vote once per day for the player of their choice.
There are instructions on where to go and how to vote. But in short, there is a QR code for each player that can be scanned. Or each player has a code that can be texted as a vote. Bentley’s code is 26040, and needs to be texted to 844-623-9688.
The fan vote will produce 10 finalists, to be announced March 18, after which fans can again cast votes in a second round of balloting from March 18-29.
That will cut the field to a final three, from which the Hobey Baker winner will be chosen. The winner will be announced on April 10 during the NCAA Frozen Four Championship in Las Vegas.
The award ceremony will be broadcast nationally on NHL Network and streamed live at hobeybaker.com.
Dave Eminian is the Journal Star 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 686-3206 or deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on X.com @icetimecleve.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: College hockey’s Hobey Baker Award has its first Peoria-born candidate
Reporting by Dave Eminian, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
