READING, PA – The Reading Royals, proud affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, beat the Adirondack Thunder, 6-2, on Wednesday, January 12th at Santander Arena. Hayden Hawkey made 20 saves on 22 shots, while Brandon Kasel stopped 27 of 32 shots.
The Royals scored four unanswered goals to open the first half of the game. Dominic Cormier scored his first of two goals, a career-high for him, on the power play midway through the first period. He slotted himself in the low left circle and received a pass from Jacob Pritchard before slotting it by the surprised Kasel.
Anthony Gagnon scored his first goal with the Royals later in the period after a horrible giveaway by the Thunder directly in front of the cage.
Patrick Bajkov scored his sixth goal in four games five minutes into the second period off a ripper from the slot the bounced off Kasel’s glove and in, and Cormier completed a beautiful set of tic-tac-toe passes on the rush to make it 4-0.
Adirondack showed a spark of life after Shane Harper’s fly-by deflection beat Hawkey to make it 4-1 at the end of the second period. Trevor Gooch put the Royals back in front by four goals halfway through the third period, but Filip Virgili, playing in his first ECHL game, scored his first ECHL goal to make it 5-2.
Thunder head coach Alex Loh pulled Kasel with three minutes to play, but Patrick McNally wristed the puck from the Royals’ goal line into the cage to ice it, 6-2.
The Royals next travel to Worcester to play the Worcester Railers at 7:05 p.m. on Friday, January 14th at the DCU Center.
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