December 15-17

The weekend of December 15-17 will be remembered for some time and for reasons more bad than good. For starters it was a three-in-three hockey weekend at the Arena (one of three on the schedule) and for seconds the Friday weather and travel was a disaster. There was snow in the forecast, predictions were for a dusting to an inch. I had a haircut appointment at 12:30, in the afternoon the snow arrived as I was going south to Jenny's place. We made our way back around town and encountered nothing but backup after backup, there wasn't a road I could get on that wasn't slowed to a crawl. We never moved at any appreciable speed until we got onto 222 outside of Brownstown (a back-road shortcut I know), we finally made it to the Arena at 6:00, one hour before faceoff and an hour later than normal. The hell of it all is that conditions weren't really all that bad, everybody just freaked out over one lousy inch of snow. If you are going to live in this region you have to know how to drive in this stuff or else stay the hell off the road and out of the way. The Wheeling Nailers were the opponent on Friday and Saturday, these games concluding a stretch of four straight home dates for the Royals with Wheeling as the visitor. The Royals are somewhat shorthanded due to injuries and AHL callups, the roster had some new faces added as free agents from the Southern Professional Hockey League. In the Friday opener the Royals took a 1-0 lead in the first thanks to a goal from Scott Tanski, late in the period Matt Willows and Michael Huntebrinker scored eight seconds apart to up the lead to three. Willows struck again in the second to make it 4-0, that would be the final as Mark Dekanich earned his first shutout of the season and the second for the club. On Saturday the leftover slop melted down nicely, driving was absolutely no issue whatever. On this night Dek was in goal again but Wheeling led 3-0 in the third, goals from Adam Schmidt and newcomer Brian Morgan (from SPHL Pensacola) brought the Royals within one. A Wheeling empty-netter ended the rally as the Nailers left town with the 4-2 decision. On Sunday the Adirondack Thunder visited for the fifth of their seven games at the Arena, new goaltender Tyler Parks got the start in net. Parks was recently added from SPHL Peoria since John Muse is on recall to the AHL Phantoms, on this day his Royals debut did not go well. The Thunder scored three goals in the first period and were never headed as they won going away 6-2, Adam Schmidt and Derek Whitmore scored for the Royals. The club's mark stands at 14-10-2, 9-3-0 at the Arena. The end of the weekend also marks the end of a seven-game home stretch against either ADK or WHL (although we see the Thunder once more at home before the end of 2017), the boys are back at home versus Manchester for a back-to-back on the 22nd and 23rd. Take care, thanks for reading.