State of the Royals
The franchise’s first game ever is tonight, so what better time to debut your weekly Victoria Royals roundup?
The Royals will kick the season off with a home and home against their budding rivals, the Vancouver Giants. After splitting a pair of preseason games against the Giants, the action starts tonight at the Pacific Coliseum and continues at the Save-On-Foods Memorial Arena Saturday Night for the Royals home opener.
David Musil will play after being cut by the Oilers, No word if the two teams will find themselves on the same ferry sailing Saturday morning.
The home opener was sold out this week, but 500 tickets have just been released.
If you can’t get a ticket, it will be one of four Royals games shown by Shaw TV this season, but the Royals are pulling out all the stops for this game, including getting Mark Donnelly to sing the anthem, so this might be the time to drop $20 on the boys.
Recent Results
It wasn’t the strongest preseason for the Royals, dropping four of five, but the beauty of the preseason is that it doesn’t matter one bit. The losses to the Rockets, 3-2 and 7-2, can be thrown out, the 4-2 loss to the Blazers forgotten, and the OT win over the Giants thanks to Jamie Crook’s powerplay goal can be thrown in the back pocket and used this weekend.
State of the Royals
News and Notes
The Royals have re-assigned Reid Halabi to the CAC Canadians of the Alberta Major Midget Hockey League.
As menti0ned, Shaw TV will broadcast four Royals games this year: the home opener Saturday night against the Giants, December 14 against the Oil Kings, February 17 versus the Prince George Cougars, and March 9 against the Kelowna Rockets.
The team has also announced its Mad Monday promotion where you can scoop up an upper row ticket to any weekly game for just $5 on Mondays.
Player Watch
With Ryan Howse and Roman Horak out of the picture from last season in Chilliwack, the offence will fall to Kevin Sundher this year.
The Surrey native and Sabres prospect has put up 137 points over his last two WHL seasons, and will have to shoulder most of the offensive load in a team many predict will struggle.
The speedy playmaker will have to deal with 9 teammates under the age of 17, but as he recently told the Times-Colonist, that’s where the experience of Marc Habscheid comes into play.
About Richard Hodges
