December 6-10

Wednesday night at the Arena, the Royals were at home for the second of four straight home dates against Wheeling. The clubs had met over the weekend for a pair of games in Wheeling, there was some ugliness in the second game that resulted in several suspensions. On this night there was some leftover testiness even though none of the punished players were in the lineup, at one point in the third period the respective head coaches had a verbal confrontation that thankfully went no further. Nolan Zajac gave the Royals a 1-0 lead early in the first period, Alex Krushelnyski's marker late in the period extended the advantage to two. The Nailers got on the board in the second but from there Mark Dekanich and the defense held the fort for a tough 2-1 victory. The club improves to 8-1 at home (avenging their lone home loss in the process) and 12-7-2 overall, the club plays its next two on the road before returning for a three-in-three on December 15 (Friday and Saturday versus Wheeling, Sunday against Adirondack). On Thursday I stopped by basketball practice at McCaskey in late afternoon to pick up the scorebooks and a team roster from Coach Powell. Right now we have twenty-four players on the organizational roster, thirteen on the varsity and twelve on the JV with one player going both ways. It's hard to say what kind of team we'll have, in '16-17 the program's 7-14 mark was its worst since 1994. We have eight returnees who have varsity experience but most of them were chiefly JV players, who will step up and claim starting positions remains to be seen. Our teams never lack for talent or athleticism but this year's will be very inexperienced at least at the start. The journey begins on the 11th at home against Chester in the first game of our typically tough non-league schedule. When I left school I went directly to the rink where the fall dek hockey season came to an end. The Owls defeated the Kings 4-3 to claim the West Division title scoring the winning goal with twenty-seven seconds left. The season started on October 3 and ended sixty-six days later, as the weekend played out it was probably not a minute too soon. On Saturday the first major weather event of the season dumped five inches of snow in our area, it began in late morning and peaked during the later afternoon/early evening hours. I was with Jenny for a lunch visit, when I got home around 3:00 the snow was beginning to fall in earnest and I was very glad to be in and warm. Take care, thanks for reading.