{"id":546432,"date":"2026-04-08T00:24:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/546432\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T00:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:24:18","slug":"playoff-hockey-as-thunderbolts-get-ready-for-game-1-wed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/546432\/","title":{"rendered":"Playoff hockey as Thunderbolts get ready for Game 1 Wed."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) &#8211; Playoff hockey is back in Evansville! <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">After winning the SPHL President\u2019s Cup title last season, the Thunderbolts are ready to defend their title! <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Evansville punched its ticket to the SPHL postseason a couple weeks ago, and then, this past weekend, clinched home ice advantage in the first round. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Now, the playoffs start Wednesday, April 8 and they will face the team that they just beat twice last weekend: the Pensacola Ice Flyers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Bolts not only took two from the Ice Flyers last weekend, but they actually swept all four games against them this season. But despite all that success, the Bolts know they still have to come ready to play. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Jeff Bes is the Thunderbolts head coach: \u201cSince we played them the last two games of the year, we can\u2019t get comfy, can\u2019t be overconfident. They\u2019re gonna change up and we will too. A tighter game. We\u2019re prepared and have the mentality of new a team. Whatever happened previously don\u2019t matter. Everyone is 0-0. Gotta win Game 1.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">14 Sports also talked with Matthew Hobbs, who plays Center for the Bolts: \u201cWe earned home ice. We\u2019ve been on other end, been the underdog. We know they\u2019re coming hard and that\u2019s why we\u2019re out here working our butts off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Thunderbolts and Ice Flyers drop the puck in Game 1 of their best-of-3 playoff series at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday! <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Thunderbolts get ready for Game 1 of Playoffs Wednesday\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/MQ4Q3474NZCLNKOFFUEGJJQVN4.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>Thunderbolts get ready for Game 1 of Playoffs Wednesday<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WFIE. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) &#8211; Playoff hockey is back in Evansville! After winning the SPHL President\u2019s Cup title last&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[62171,5,62172,182,35832],"class_list":{"0":"post-546432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-evansville-thunderbolts","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-pensacola-ice-flyers","11":"tag-playoffs","12":"tag-sphl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116366245330257831","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}