READING, PA – Reading Royals forward Frank DiChiara scored his 4th goal of the season with 13:07 to go in the third period and the Royals survived the Maine Mariners, 5-4, Sunday at Santander Arena. The win moved the Royals to 2-2-1-0 (5 points). Ralph Cuddemi registered his second multi-goal game of the season with a pair of tallies, including a third-period marker that provided Reading a 4-3 advantage. Kirill Ustimenko picked up his first win in North American with 18 saves, including a last-second denial on Maine forward Ty Ronning.
The Royals led twice – 3-0 and 4-3 – but the Mariners forged a pair of comebacks to even the score. Dillan Fox scored 15 seconds after Cuddemi with 15:29 to go to make it a 4-4 game.
Following the tying effort, Garrett Mitchell snapped a pass to DiChiara at the right circle and he unleashed a top-shelf shot over Connor LaCouvee (loss, 30 saves on 35 shots faced) to give the Royals the lead for good.
The Royals struck twice in the opening three minutes and Reading held a 10-5 shots advantage through 20. Matthew Gaudreau factored in with helpers on both goals. First, he intercepted a pass and fed Trevor Yates (2nd of season) at 1:23 of the first. Next, 1:24 later, Gaudreau received the secondary assist on Ralph Cuddemi’s power-play marker. Eric Knodel took the primary assist, slap-passing it to the right doorstep to Cuddemi.
Knodel scored Reading’s second power-play tally with a 5-on-3 strike and 6:16 elapsed in the second. He slammed it from the deep slot to the top shelf, with a helper from DiChiara. The Mariners scored three times before the end of the second to tie it.
Six Royals registered multi-point games and Gaudreau topped the Royals with three assists. Trevor Yates, Cuddemi, DiChiara, Knodel and Mitchell each had two points. Reading’s power play went 2-for-7 and all those players received a point on the man up. Reading has scored seven power-play tallies on 19 chances this season. Maine was 2-for-5 on the man up.
The Royals picked up their first home win of the season and are 1-1-0-0 at Santander Arena this campaign.
Reading next plays on the road at Wheeling on Saturday, October 26th at 7:05 p.m.
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