Waffle House, weigh station: How the Peoria Rivermen spent 40 hours stranded on way home

PEORIA — The Peoria Rivermen pushed the Pensacola Ice Flyers to the point of no return with a victory in Game 1 of the SPHL quarterfinal playoffs Thursday night in Florida.

Then the Rivermen had trouble making a return of their own to Peoria.

The Rivermen's way back home became a saga when the team bus broke down twice, leaving the team stranded at an Alabama Waffle House and then later, at an abandoned highway weigh station in Tennessee, about an hour outside Nashville.

As the hours — days — passed, players took their mattresses off their bunks on the bus and laid on them like lounge chairs on the side of the road, equipment piled on the pavement around them.

"A desperate situation," Rivermen co-owner Bart Rogers said as he tried to work the problem. "We had no options, it was a sick feeling. We probably called 40 bus companies, and down south it's still spring break. There's no buses, no drivers. We checked for flights, none of them had enough seats available. Rent vans or cars? None of them were available for one-way trips out of their region.

"Our last resort was going to be to rent vehicles in Peoria and have our front office staff drive 10 hours down south to get the team and come back."

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The SPHL — and the Pensacola Ice Flyers — both gave their blessings to postpone Game 2 Saturday while Peoria worked on getting its team home.

"We left it up to our players," Rivermen coach Jean-Guy Trudel said. "And they were unanimous — they want to play Saturday. And so they will."

Game 2 will be delayed slightly to an 8 p.m. start. Doors at Carver Arena will open as normal, and food and playoff merchandise will be available.

As of noon Saturday, the No. 1-seeded Rivermen were still not back in Peoria, but they were on wheels and about 90 minutes away from Carver Arena.

But in between Pensacola, Florida, and Peoria, Illinois was a story of perseverance.

What was in the road?

The Rivermen beat Pensacola 3-2 at Bay Center in Florida on Thursday night and loaded up their bus for the trip back to Peoria.

The bus broke down on the way back to central Illinois, outside Prattville, Ala., near Montgomery. The team was stranded at a Waffle House about 12 hours before finally getting underway around 1:30 p.m. Friday with 10 hours left on the trip home.

"We were using the (junior hockey) Peoria Mustangs custom bus," Trudel said. "We hit an animal or something pretty big in the road, and the exhaust pipe was driven into the bus's air brakes. I didn't realize how much air pressure those things had in them, it was a serious leak.

"We were by this Waffle House, so the boys were hanging out there. A mechanic arrived to fix the bus, had to leave again to get some parts, then came back to finish the repairs. No big deal. We'll be ready to play."

That was then.

The mechanic made two trips for parts, welded pieces together and they went on their way.

They reached the Alabama-Tennessee border when the air brakes on the bus started to overheat.

"It felt like the rear of the bus, the axle or something, was rattling," Trudel said. "We coasted into this weigh station in the middle of nowhere. It was abandoned."

Players were asked to unload the bus to prepare for a replacement ride. They took the mattresses off their bunks and laid on them on the pavement, staying outside until midnight.

And the waiting began.

Players used stick tape to set up a four-square court on the pavement and played. Somebody tried to chase down an armadillo. Others read books, watched movies. A tow truck driver dispatched his wife with pizzas for the team.

"This is going to end up being a 40-hour trip home," Trudel said Saturday. "Longest trip ever in hockey history, probably."

A miracle happened

Back in Peoria, Trudel's wife, Angie, saw an online ad for buses. She let Rogers know.

"I was scared to click on it, to be honest," Rogers said. "But we had no choice. We clicked on a cold call advertisement and we started talking to people in Los Angeles and New York."

The company said it had a bus and a driver in Huntsville, Ala. Rogers ended up paying $10,000 for that ride, but the hockey gods were not yet ready to let him go.

"They called back and told us the driver would meet the team and could only take us to Paducah, Ky.," Rogers said. "We would have to meet a second driver on another bus there to take us the rest of the way."

After hours and hours and a half-dozen more calls between Rogers and the bus company, the team was still waiting. They hadn't seen anyone in 10 hours, not even a passing police unit.

Then the bus company called and said the driver was lost, went to the north Tennessee border instead of the south border, where the team was.

The company re-directed him — then later called Rogers and said "We have lost contact with our driver." He never did show up, opting to go back to his home base and call it a day.

So the second driver, waiting for the handoff in Paducah, Ky., was asked to drive to southern Tennessee and rescue the Rivermen.

He arrived in a limo party bus at 4 a.m. Saturday.

True story.

"We were stopped 12 hours after the first breakdown and 11 hours after the second one," Trudel said. "But we're about three hours away from Peoria.

"Oh, and the air conditioning just broke."

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SPHL awards

The SPHL league awards continued rolling out on Friday, as Birmingham's Craig Simchuk was named Coach of the Year.

The Bulls finished second, behind the Rivermen, as Simchuk led his team to a 36-point increase from 2021-22, the largest single-season point increase in league history.

Rivermen coach Jean-Guy Trudel has won the honor a league-record three times, in 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2017-18.Next up is SPHL Defenseman of the Year, scheduled for Monday.

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 Twitter @icetimecleve.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: 40-hour journey: Peoria Rivermen hockey team stuck in Alabama, Tennessee