A rare Thursday hockey game at the Arena which came about thanks to another event. After the league schedule was released in May the Arena had an opportunity to book a concert for December 1, as a result the game for that date was pushed back to the day before. On this night the Kalamazoo Wings visited from southwestern Michigan for the first time since November 2018. The Wings are in the league's Western Conference and are infrequent visitors but they and the Royals have a playoff history, the clubs met in the postseason in 2010 and 2011. The Royals' early-season struggles continued on this night in the form of another frustrating one-goal defeat. New addition Tag Bertuzzi (son of former NHLer Todd Bertuzzi) gave the Royals a 1-0 lead midway through the first period, after the K-Wings tied it Brendan Hoffmann scored the 5000th goal in Royals franchise history to make it 2-1 at the intermission. The Wings went ahead 3-2 in the second, late in the period Bertuzzi struck again to knot the game at 3-3. Kalamazoo took the lead back in the second minute of the third period and made it stand up for the 4-3-win, new goaltender Parker Gahagen (on assignment from the Phantoms) made his Royals debut and suffered the loss. The teams get an (originally unscheduled) day off before the rematch on Saturday the 2nd. Take care, thanks for reading.
