Saturday night at the Arena, the Wheeling Nailers visited for the last of their two appearances. This was (for lack of a better term) Beer Night, there were specials available at the concession stands and the Royals wore sweaters featuring the logo of a very popular local brew that has been in business since 1886. On this night Jackson Cressey gave the Home Boys a 1-0 lead twenty-one seconds after game started, that held until the second period when the Nailers scored twice on the power play to go up 2-1. The third period was all Royals, six minutes in Brayden Low lit the lamp to even matters at 2-2. Three minutes later Kenny Hausinger (whose younger brother Cam plays for Wheeling) gave the Royals a 3-2 advantage. In the closing moments Ryan MacKinnon (Prince Edward Island native on assignment from the Phantoms) scored an insurance goal bringing the final to 4-2, Kiill Ustimenko (also back from a stint with the Phantoms) got the start in net and picked up the W. The victory is the club's seventh straight (including a Friday road win in Worcester), that follows a 0-3-1 stretch which was in turn preceded by a five-game win streak in early February. The club's mark stands at 30-12-7 overall and 15-4-3 at home, we're back for a March 9 makeup with Adirondack. On Sunday I spent six interesting hours at McCaskey at the request of athletic director Jon Mitchell, it was a groundbreaking event that we'll talk more about in our next entry here. As they used to say on TV: Stay Tuned. Thanks for reading.
