February 11-13

Friday night hockey at the Arena as the Trois-Rivieres Lions visited for the first of a back-to-back marking their final appearances in Reading for the regular season. This was Pink-In-The-Rink weekend for breast cancer awareness, the Royals wore pink sweaters and the ice surface was tinted pink as well. On Friday the scoring came early and often, after TR took a quick lead the Royals scored twice within twenty-four seconds. First-year pro Mason Millman (on assignment from the Phantoms) lit the lamp followed in short order by Thomas Ebbing to put the Royals up 2-1. The visitors from the Province of Quebec replied with two goals three minutes apart before Patrick Bajkov knotted the game 3-3 at the first intermission. The teams traded goals in the second period with Trevor Gooch doing the honors for the Home Team. In the third period Brad Morrison gave the Royals the lead for good, Bajkov's second of the night into the empty net wrapped up the 6-4 decision for winning goalie Hayden Hawkey. On Saturday a completely different kind of game took place, the Royals led 2-1 after the first but from there we witnessed a collapse of incredible proportion. In the second period Trois-Rivieres scored SEVEN times in a nine-minute stretch of play including three goals on a single two-minute penalty-kill to go ahead 8-3. The final score was 10-4, Jacob Pritchard scored twice for the Royals with single tallies coming from Ebbing and Anthony Gagnon. University Of Michigan product Hayden Lavigne (recently added with Kirill Ustimenko on recall to the AHL) got his first start for the Royals and didn't survive the second period, he surrendered five goals in thirty minutes played and took the loss. The club reaches the midpoint of its home schedule at 13-2-3, overall the mark is 23-10-6. The homestand continues with games on the 19th and 20th. Take care, thanks for reading.