Another quiet week with little going on affords the opportunity to put the twenty-second season of Reading Royals hockey into the books (yeah, we all know it should have been the twenty-third but that's an old story). The club's final mark of 29-35-8 was the fifth below-500 season in franchise history and the first since 2008-09, from February 2 under Jason Binkley the record was 13-16-4. Fifty-eight players appeared including seven goaltenders, Nolan Maier (forty) and Parker Gahagen (fourteen) the only two with double-digit appearances. Joseph Nardi, Devon Paliani, Matt Brown, Yvan Mongo and Tag Bertuzzi were the top five scorers, Paliani and Tyson Fawcett were the only two skaters to appear in every game. Historically the franchise has played 1,571 regular-season games for a mark of 831-581-159, in postseason play the Royals have won one championship (2013, the lone appearance in the Finals), lost in the Conference Final three times, lost in the Division Final six times, lost in the first round five times and failed to qualify on six occasions (and we won't even discuss The Year We Never Talk About). It should be a very interesting off-season with the first order of business being whether or not the "interim" tag is removed from Jason Binkley's title, from there it's anybody's guess and October will be here before you know it. Take care, thanks for reading.
