In a perfect world we'd be playing weeknight dek hockey at this time of year but regrettably we live in an imperfect world, as a result there is little happening right now from Mondays to Thursdays. On Tuesday the ECHL announced the member clubs' season-opening rosters. The Royals' 23-man roster is unusual for this day in age in that it is exclusively North American, there are twelve players from Canada and eleven from the United States. The club has one player on assignment from the NHL Flyers and seven from the AHL Phantoms, twelve of the twenty-three are entering their first full season of professional hockey. It is a very young squad and there will undoubtedly be growing pains but in time it will come together. On Friday afternoon I was at the ballpark on North Prince Street for a special fundraiser event billed as the "Battle Of The Unions". This was originally scheduled for a Sunday in September but was rained out, the Barnstormers management offered this date as a makeup opportunity. The event was to raise funds for autism awareness, it was built around a round-robin softball tournament featuring teams comprised of city police, firefighters and municipal workers. Each team played two five-inning games with the top two seeds meeting for the championship. There were a number of extra attractions originally booked that did not happen thanks to the rainout/reschedule but the event was still successful, over four-thousand dollars were donated for the cause (one can only wonder how much better the original Sunday might have been). We started around 4:15 and were done shortly after 9:00, for the record the firefighters won the tournament over the police. Take care, thanks for reading.
