ECHL Reading Royals

If This Is Thursday, It Must Be Brussels

March 19, 2007 - ECHL (ECHL)
Reading Royals News Release


I dare say that there are few who've directly experienced a professional hockey travel schedule (or, for that matter, a traveling salesman's itinerary) who haven't fought the disturbing panic of waking up in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat with that age-old vexing question grinding at the edge of the fog: 'exactly where am I right now?'. It seems particularly true at this time of the year in the ECHL when many teams are faced with the daunting task of jamming a bunch of games into the rapidly dwindling days of the regular season. The Royals just completed a season long six game road trip where it felt like we pinballed to various locales around the countryside only to return home in a semi-dazed state and get slapped in the face with the cold, hard reality that we still have two more games to go. Yeah, there's nothing quite like a stretch of five games in six days to stretch just about everything that makes us human to the breaking point (not to mention what it does to relationships with other humans....) Nonetheless, the Royals held it together well enough this week to come out of the experience with a winning record. We had our moments, to be sure. Case in point: the third period in Dayton on Tuesday night when the team was unable to hold two separate leads down the stretch, resulting in an ugly loss in more ways than one. The team bounced back on Wednesday with a dramatic overtime victory in Cincinnati, followed by a return visit to Dayton where the Royals picked up their first win of the season at the E.J. Nutter Center. On Saturday, we were back home to face the Johnstown Chiefs and win the first of what are sure will be at least several more 'biggest game(s) of the season'; only to run out of gas in the third period of the sixth game on Sunday and allow Wheeling to run away with the two points. If that sounds like a confused and busy week, it was. But we can take a breath for a day or two before we head on the road again-this time to Toledo-or was that somewhere in Belgium? I guess it doesn't matter all that much, anyway. Just if you would be so kind as to wake us when we get there....

TOP TEN NOTES OF THE WEEK

1. The Royals' extended a losing streak to three games with the 4-3 loss in Dayton on Tuesday. The team then turned that around and went on a three game winning streak beginning with the overtime victory in Cincinnati on Wednesday and continuing through the wins in Dayton (Friday) and against Johnstown (at home on Saturday). That streak was snapped with Sunday's 4-1 loss to Wheeling.

2. Reading went 3 - 3 - 0 in the team's season long six game road trip, which concluded with the team's first win this year at the E.J Nutter Center in Dayton on Friday night.

3. Joe Zappala scored the Royals' first goal (to tie the game at one) and picked up an assist in Reading's 4-3 loss in Dayton on Tuesday. Zappala also scored a goal and picked up an assist in the Royals' 4-3 overtime win in Cincinnati on Wednesday, as well scoring the game's first goal (and assisting on the game winner) in Friday's 4-3 win in Dayton-which extended his personal goal scoring streak to four games and his multi-point streak to three. Zappala also picked up an assist on Saturday (on the GWG by Taylor Christie) and on Sunday, stretching his point streak to 5 games (3g - 5a = 8pts).

4. Brett Smith scored two goals and picked up an assist in Tuesday's 4-3 loss in Dayton, marking Smith's first multi-goal game and three point performance of the season for Reading. Smith also scored the game winning goal-his second GWG of the season for Reading-in the 4-3 win in Dayton on Friday night. Smith picked up an assist in that game, as well, and now has 4 multi-point games in the 18 that he's played with Reading this year.

5. Jon Francisco scored the Royals' first goal on Wednesday (to tie the game at one) and the team's second on Friday (to give Reading a 2 - 0 lead). Both of those goals were power play goals-Francisco's first power play goals of the season. Francisco also picked up assists in the 4-3 loss in Dayton on Tuesday and the 3-1 win against Johnstown on Saturday, extending his personal point streak to five games (2g - 4a = 6pts), which was snapped in the 4-1 loss to Wheeling on Sunday.

6. Michael Cohen scored his first goal as a pro to tie the game at three (at the 5:25 mark of the third) in Cincinnati on Wednesday. Cohen also picked up an assist in that game for his first multipoint performance as a pro. Cohen also had an assist on Tuesday in Dayton, on Friday in Dayton, and against Johnstown on Saturday, extending his personal point streak to five games (1g - 5a = 6pts), which was snapped on Sunday against Wheeling.

7. Malcolm MacMillan scored his first overtime game winning goal as a pro at the 3:35 mark of OT against Cincinnati on Wednesday. MacMillan also added 27 penalty minutes to his league leading 256 this week. Those PIMs included two majors for fighting, which took his league leading total to 20.

8. Chris Bala scored a goal and picked up an assist in Reading's 4-3 win in Dayton on Friday, marking his eleventh multi-point game of the season. Bala also scored an empty netter to ice the Royals' win on Saturday over Johnstown with 32 seconds left in the game.

9. Taylor Christie scored the game winning goal for the Royals in the 3-1 win over Johnstown on Saturday. That was Christie's fourth goal of the season and his first GWG of the season.

10. Charlie Kronschnabel picked up an assist in his first pro game on Friday in Dayton and scored his first pro goal in Sunday's 4-1 loss to Johnstown.

CLOSING NOTES

1. Jason Becker scored the game's first goal in the 3-1 win over Johnstown on Saturday. That marked his first FG of the season. Becker is currently sixteenth in defensemen scoring with 35 points (9g - 26a = 35pts).

2. Goaltender Yutaka Fukufuji played in three games this past week. Fukufuji extended his streak of games played for Reading to ten with the 4-3 loss in Dayton on Tuesday and the 4-3 overtime win in Cincinnati on Wednesday. (Fukufuji is the only North Division goaltender that the Cyclones have faced who they have not defeated.) In those ten consecutive games, Fukufuji went 6 - 4 - 0. Fukufuji also picked up the win for Reading on Saturday, stopping 29 of 30 shots against Johnstown.

3. Goaltender Jeff Pietrasiak returned to the Royals from the Herhsey Bears of the AHL on Friday and picked up the win for Reading in Dayton that night. That was Pietrasiak's first game for the Royals since a 2-1 shootout win against Wheeling on February 18.

4. The Royals 4-3 overtime win in Cincinnati was Reading's second OT win of the season. The other came on December 9 against the Johnstown Chiefs. The Royals are 2-1 in OT and 5-6 in games that have ended regulation time in a tie.

5. In the two losses that the Royals sustained this week (4-3 @ Dayton on Tuesday) (4-1 v. Wheeling on Sunday), they were outscored in the third period by a total of 6-2, as Reading allowed three goals in each of those third periods. The Royals have now given up three or more goals in the third period five times this year and are 0 - 5 - 0 in those games. Over the course of the year, Reading has allowed 2 or more third period goals against 16 times, and the team is 1 - 15 - 0 in those games. Overall, the Royals have outscored the opposition 71-67 in the third.

Check out the Reading Royals Statistics



ECHL Stories from March 19, 2007


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