Back at the Arena on Friday evening for game #2 of our three-game mini-series with Norfolk, on this night the visitors scored the first goal and the last goal with the Royals scoring five in-between. First-year pro Kenny Hausinger (from UMass-Lowell) evened the score midway through the first period, Joshua Winquist's marker two minutes later gave the Royals a 2-1 lead at the intermission. In the middle period Frank DiChiara found the net to make it 3-1, another lamp-lighter from second-year Dartmouth College product Cam Strong upped the advantage to 4-1. Brayden Low finished the home team's portion of the scoring in the third as the Royals avenged the Wednesday night OT loss with a convincing 5-2 victory. On Saturday Jenny and her mother were along for Military Appreciation Night, the Royals wore camouflage-themed sweaters with the club's 20th-anniversary logo front and center. The playoff-style "hate factor" was in evidence from the outset, there was a fight two minutes into the game and two more in the final seven seconds. The first period ended 0-0 but from there the scoring was all Royals, goals by Frank DiChiara and Kenny Hausinger two minutes apart gave the Good Guys a 2-0 lead at the intermission. In the final period DiChiara scored his second of the evening (and third of the weekend), Jacob Pritchard's empty-netter in the closing moments closed the door on a 4-0 win. Pat Nagle was the winning goaltender both nights, his Saturday shutout featured thirty-eight saves on as many Norfolk shots. The club improves to 5-1-3 (3-0-1 at home), the homestand continues with the Newfoundland Growlers in town on Friday the 19th with a return match on the 20th and a return visit from Norfolk on the 21st. On Sunday we were in Rothsville at Lions Park for the Sunday league's Grand Finale and an amazing story unfolded. Ephrata had only five players available (a goalie and four runners), they won their semifinal over Township in overtime. Hillside defeated Warwick in regulation time in the other semifinal, after a brief recess Ephrata met Hillside in the championship game. Ephrata rallied from deficits of 3-0 and 4-2 to pull even in the third, after Hillside went up 5-4 Ephrata tied it with four seconds left in regulation. The overtime period was over almost as quickly as it had started, Ephrata scored in the first minute to win the championship in one of the more incredible ways you may ever see. If something like that happened at the professional level it would be talked about for years (and around here it might be anyway). Take care, thanks for reading.
