Saturday night at the Arena for the back end of the weekend homestand, the Maine Mariners visited for the first of seven dates. Within the division Maine and Norfolk are the most frequent visitors with seven dates each, Adirondack and Trois-Rivieres come in five times, Wheeling four and Worcester three. On this night the Royals played another competitive game but again fell by one goal 3-2. Phantoms assignees Sawyer Boulton and Matt Brown (an ECHL mid-season All-Star as a Royal in '23-24) were the goal-scorers, Vinnie Purpura made his home debut in net and suffered the loss. The club's record of 6-10-3 is obviously not what anyone wants right now but the problem is very clear: the team is simply not scoring enough to win. The defense and goaltending has been reasonably good allowing a little over three goals per game but the offense is only scoring slightly over two-and a half goals per game and that isn't going to get the job done. The boys play their next two on the road, the next home date is on December 7. High school basketball practice is well underway, on Tuesday we were at McCaskey. Freddy Ramos is back for his seventh season as the head man, on this night the Red Tornado hosted Wilson for a preseason scrimmage. As it stands right now the organization has twenty-four players (including thirteen returnees from the previous season) evenly divided between Varsity and Junior Varsity, there are seven seniors, five juniors, ten sophomores and two freshman. In '23-24 the JV squad finished at 9-13 while the varsity started 5-6 before falling apart in the second half and limping to the finish line at 7-15, one can only hope that the team chemistry is better this time around. The season starts for real at home on the 30th (and it has been many years since it began on Thanksgiving weekend). Take care, thanks for reading.
