Brawley, Rivermen Stand Tall in 4-1 Victory over Roanoke
November 18, 2023 - 10:30 pm
PEORIA, IL – In his first true home start for the Peoria Rivermen, goaltender Brendhan Brawley stood tall against a motivated Roanoke Rail Yard Dawg squad eager to avenge their Friday night loss. The Rivermen, led by their goaltender, stood tall and recorded a 4-1 victory on Saturday night at Carver Arena to earn their first true weekend sweep of the season.
Brawley was spectacular in the first period as he held off the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs who were on the attack for most of the start of the game. Thanks, Brawley, the Rivermen held off the Dawgs and remained scoreless after the first period.
The Rivermen's offense came alive in the second period starting with A backdoor pass to Alec Baer off of an offensive zone face-off to put the Rivermen up 1-0. Roanoke took advantage of a broken stick to capitalize on an odd-man rush soon after but then the Rivermen power play went to work. Jordan Ernst led the charge with a rock of a shot from the right half-boards that snuck in just under the cross-bar to put the Rivermen up 2-1. Alec Hagaman added on another power-play goal with a deflection off of a Joseph Widmar shot in the high slot to extend the Rivermen lead to 3-1. Then an awkward bounce went Peoria’s way as a dump-in angled off the end boards right out in front. Roanoke goaltender Brody Clayes misplayed the puck and was caught out of position as Mike Gelatt won a food race and fired a shot into a wide-open net to extend Peoria’s lead to 4-1.
In the third period, the Rail Yard Dawgs sent all kinds of shots on the net and had a long five-on-three power play. But Brawley and the Rivermen held the line and denied the Dawgs any chance to claw back into the game. In the end, Brawley made 33 saves on 34 Roanoke shots to secure his third victory in professional hockey and the first true weekend sweep for the Peoria Rivermen.
“Phenomenal, you can’t ask for a better performance,” said Rivermen Head Coach Jean-Guy Trudel. We talked about it, at one point we were going to give 30 shots and they had a lot of power plays, a lot of quality shots, but Brawley was just big tonight.”
Peoria now gets set for a long road trip next weekend to Knoxville and Huntsville over the Thanksgiving holiday before another trip south to Pensacola to take on the Ice Flyers at the start of December.
Photo: Elizabeth Maier/ Peoria Rivermen
