The Royals finished the road portion of their schedule on Friday night with an overtime win in Glens Falls, the victory clinched first place in the Division (for the first time since 2014) and first overall in the Eastern Conference. The club's final mark on the road was an excellent 21-9-5 (with one postponement in December ultimately canceled completely). On Saturday the Adirondack Thunder visited the Arena for the back end of the home-and-home series and the final home game of the regular season. Before faceoff we had a brief ceremony honoring longtime Royals broadcaster Pat Richards who has done color commentary since 2003, Pat is moving to be closer to family in South Carolina. The game itself may have been somewhat anticlimactic but you would have never known it, although the Thunder had the division's poorest record they battled to the bitter end as the professionals they are. Kevin Conley scored the game's only goal in the second period and Hayden Hawkey made it stand up for a hard-earned 1-0 victory. The shutout is Hawkey's first of the season and the team's third, Pat Nagle (vs Norfolk in November) and Tristan Cote-Cazenave (over Worcester in December) accounted for the others. The final mark at home is 24-8-4, the overall record finishes at 45-17-9. The ninety-nine points earned equals the franchise record set in 2012-13 and the .697 points percentage is a new franchise high (thanks to that one game canceled in December). The franchise has enjoyed a great comeback season since sitting out the previous year because of The BS but now the next order of business is the division semifinals, the Maine Mariners are the opponent (the other division semifinal is an all-Canada matchup, Trois-Rivieres meeting Newfoundland). The first two games of the best-of-seven series are at the Arena on the 20th and 22nd, the middle three are in Portland with the final two (if needed) back home on May 2nd and 4th. It's often been said that there are three seasons in hockey: the preseason, the regular season and the REAL season. As they used to say on television, Stay Tuned. Take care, thanks for reading.
