PEORIA, IL — The Peoria Rivermen dominated the SPHL regular season, streaking to the regular season championship and setting records along the way. The Pensacola Ice Flyers were the second best team in the regular season. Both teams met for the first game in a best-of-five series for the President’s Cup on Saturday night in Peoria in front of 3,107 fans. Of course, the first game would need to go to overtime.
Evenly played in the ovetime period, it was Joesph Holka, whose long shot rang off the crossbar and bounces into the net, who set off the celebration on the visitors bench. Holka’s shot, at 6:35 of the first overtime period passed over Rivermen goaltender Kyle Rank and a 3-2 win that stole home ice advantage from Peoria. Paul Rondrigues had an assist ion the play.
Pensacola dominated early but Peoria would force the game into overtime with a late goal by Walker Wintoneak.
After several anemic power plays, the Rivermen were finally able to even the score at even strength when Ben Power unleashed a hard shot from along the boards at the blue line. The blast was tipped by Walker Wintoneak at 16:07 of the third period to tie the game at two-all and send it to overtime.
Pensacola started the scoring when Brandon Zurn took a pass from Paul Rodrigues from behind the net. Zurn skated around traffic in front of Rank and snapped a highshot to open the scoring,s potting the Ice FLyers to an early 1-0 lead just 2:29 into the game.
Sometimes the championship series features some fantastic plays. Four minutes of the second period, there was a really dumb one. A Rivermen defenseman played the puck during an odd-man rush led by Pensacola’s Stephen Buco. While Buco had a man on him, Joe Caveney was all alone. Buco slid a pass intotnhe high slot and Caveney skated in on Rank unopposed and scored. The 2-0 lead seemed to take the wind out of the sails of the Rivermen for several minutes.
It took the Rivermen several minutes (and an awful power play) before they would show any life. Adam Stuart corralled the puck alng the wall, above the right circle and fired a low shot. Matt Zenzola, in goal for the Ice Flyers, was able to swing a leg pad into the way, but the hard shot climbed over it and into the net to bring the Rivermen to within a goal, 1-0. Steve Morra and Mark Corbett were credited with goals on the play.
Rank allowed three goals on 32 shots in his first playoff loss of the season. Zenzola allowed two goals on 27 shots for his fifth playoff win.
Neither team score on the powerplay. Pensacola had three opportunities while Peoria had four.
The teams play again on Sunday at 5:15 CDT before the series moves to Florida for games three and four.
You may contact the author at Shaun.Bill@ProHockeyNews.com or follow him on Twitter @SLBatPHN .
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