The Reading Royals hosted their Pink The Rink Night on Saturday Night at Santander Arena along with their Woman In Sports Night, which are both massive events for their own reasons. Pink The Rink Night has always been one of the best promotional nights across hockey as fans, despite who they are rooting for, can come together for a common cause in finding a cure for such an ugly disease. Reading went all out on Saturday and painted their ice pink for the cause; they will also play on the pink ice on Sunday afternoon as they wrap up the weekend series vs Adirondack Thunder. This is one of those weekends that is bigger than hockey.
Over the past few seasons, we’ve seen an uptick in goals, but on Saturday Night, we’d get a good old-fashioned goaltending battle between Nolan Maier and Tyler Brennan. Adirondack once again got off to a solid start, holding the Royals without a shot for almost the first eight minutes of play. Reading would finally start to find their groove, getting a fleury of chances on the PP, but Tyler Brennan would stand tall, stopping all 11 shots he saw in the opening frame. Both Goaltenders would stand on their heads for the rest of the game, but just like on Friday Night, Adirondack would find iron a lot during Saturday’s game. After 60 minutes, neither team would find the back of the net, and for a league-leading 16th time this year, the Thunder found themselves heading to OT. The Thunder would get their chances in OT along with the Royals but 67 minutes wasn’t enough as we headed to a shootout. Tristan Ashbrook and Grant Jozefek would score for Adirondack as they would win in a four-round shootout, and Brennan would stop all 30 shots he saw plus another three in the shootout for his first career ECHL shutout. Nolan Maier made 43 saves in the loss, including two in the shootout.
Adirondack and Reading will wrap up the weekend series with a 3 PM puck drop on Sunday Afternoon.
