PEORIA – The Peoria Rivermen dominated play in the first period but did not sustain the effort as the Mississippi RiverKings captured a 3-1 win on Friday night at Carver Arena.
The first period was scoreless although the RiverKings didn’t record a shot on goal for the first 13:15 and were outshot by the Rivermen 12-3 at the first intermission. The RiverKings nonetheless scored the first tally on a Matt Whitehead breakaway 6:41 into the second period when Andrew Randazzo deflected a pass out to center ice in Whitehead’s unmolested path to the net. Peoria equaled the game just seven seconds 
into their second power play at 10:16 of the second period on a Jake Trask goal assisted by Josh Harris and Jason Cohen to send the game to the second intermission at 1-1.
The RiverKings grabbed a 2-1 lead with 8:26 left in the third period when a rebound tumbled off Linden Bahm near the left post into an open net. Whitehead sealed the game with an empty net goal with 52.2 seconds remaining.
Peter DiSalvo registered a 24-save win while Kyle Rank stopped 22 shots to take the loss. Only three minor penalties were handed out in an incident-free game with the Rivermen scoring once on two power plays while the RiverKings did not tally on their only chance.
The Rivermen fall for only the third time in 12 home games and drop to 15-8-2 while the RiverKings improve to 12-13-2 and remain in seventh place in the Southern Professional Hockey League. With Knoxville’s win at Huntsville, the Rivermen fall to third place with 32 points, four behind league-leading Pensacola, two behind second-place Knoxville and just one point ahead of fourth-place Louisiana.
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