April 9-10

The expected precipitation arrived overnight into Saturday, in the morning it was snowing hard and the flakes were large. There was a newspaper story saying how this would be our area's "onion snow", that may well have been the case because it was all over by the time I left for lunch with Jenny and her mother. The drive south was wet but otherwise no issue at all, by afternoon the snow that had laid on grassy areas was just about all gone as well. In the evening we were at the Arena for the final game of the regular season, the Wheeling Nailers were the opponent. Before the game we honored all those who have been season ticket holders for the entire fifteen-year history of the franchise, after that a video spotlighting the players who won end-of-season awards was shown on the videoboard. At its conclusion team president Drew Bell announced that there was one more to be presented, he then named me as the recipient of the 2015-16 Team President's Award. I had a feeling something was up because Drew had asked me if I could make it to the radio show on awards night, when I indicated it might be iffy because of baseball he said it was OK if I couldn't. When I read the publicity for the awards on Wednesday they mentioned one more would be presented on game night, when I arrived on Saturday certain parties were being very secretive and I more or less put two and two together. All I can say is it's always nice to have what you do be appreciated and respected, I can attest that it doesn't always happen everywhere. In the game itself the Royals suffered another frustrating home-ice defeat, a one-goal lead in the third period melted away as quickly as the morning snow in a 4-2 loss to Wheeling. Justin Crandall and Ian Watters scored for the Royals, Martin Ouellette (back from the Phantoms) got the start in net. The final mark is 36-26-10, 16-15-5 at home. The club matches up with the Toledo Walleye in the first round of playoffs, the series starts on the 15th in Toledo. Games #3, #4 and #6 are at the Arena, the first of those is on Tuesday the 19th. Take care, thanks for reading.