February 24-25

Sunday afternoon hockey at the Sovereign Center as the Royals hosted Trenton in the back end of a home-and-home. Sometimes things happen in sports that are hard to fathom yet they are so incredible no one could possibly make them up. In recent days the Royals' goaltending has been in a state of flux, between injuries and reassignments the club found itself with Brandon Anderson as its only available goalie for the Thursday game against Kalamazoo.. A youngster named Corey Milan was signed as his backup, he was also in uniform for the Royals' Saturday loss in Trenton. On Saturday night in Hershey Dany Sabourin (Bears' backup goalie) was injured while sitting on the bench, he was struck in the forehead by an errant puck. With a game of their own scheduled for Sunday the Bears recalled Anderson from the Royals to back up Philipp Grubauer. Royals coach Larry Courville made an SOS phone call to old friend and former teammate Frederic Cassivi, they were together in the AHL with Syracuse in the mid 90s and Hershey in the early 2000s. Cassivi has been retired since 2010, he's been living in the Hershey area and works as a financial adviser for a local banking institution. On this day at the Sovereign Center he was the starting goaltender for the Royals, making his ECHL "debut" at the age of 37. The Royals lost to Trenton 5-3 but it was in no way Cassivi's fault, under the circumstances he gave the club all that was expected and more. Stanislav Galiev, Joel Champagne and newcomer Jeff Corey scored for the Royals, Corey is an ex-Royal who played in Reading back in '08-09. The loss drops the club's mark to 35-16-6, the boys play their next three on the road before returning to the SC on March 8th. Not much happening on Monday save for morning lunch at the mall, with spring training baseball on TV from Florida and hockey in the evening there were plenty of viewing options. Take care, thanks for reading.