ECHL’s Reading Royals offer optimism for Flyers organization

Philadelphia hockey fans have been pressed for good news this season with both the Flyers (23-42-11) and their AHL affiliate, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (27-30-13), bringing up the rear in their respective divisions.

Just an hour northwest of Philadelphia, the ECHL’s Reading Royals (44-17-9) are showing promise for the Flyers’ organization. Just having completed their 71-game regular season, the Royals have tallied 99 points, tying the team’s single-season record (2012-13 en route to the Kelly Cup championship). Reading also set a team record with a .697winning percentage.

“We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, but I don’t think anyone is near satisfied,” head coach Kirk MacDonald said.

Like the Flyers, the ECHL’s Maine Mariners, the Bruins’ feeder, are owned by Comcast Spectacor. The Maine Mariners were an AHL team affiliated with the Flyers between 1977 and 1983 before they joined the Devils and moved to Utica.

With the top seed in the North Division, Reading will host Maine in the first round of the playoffs on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Game 2 will be on Friday. Both games will be played at the Santander Arena in downtown Reading.

The winner will face either the Newfoundland Growlers or the Trois-Rivières Lions in the second round. The Growlers feed into the Maple Leafs organization and the Lions into the Canadiens’.

Most ECHL teams used between 40-50 players throughout the season, with the lineups often changing due to trades and shifts and call-ups with the AHL. The Royals enjoyed good continuity, with eight of their 16 skaters playing in both the first and final game of the season.

“Having half our team … in a league like the ECHL with moving pieces all the time, it’s nice going into the playoffs where a lot of the core group is the same,” Royals center Thomas Ebbing said. “I think that we just gel well together and we all know what [MacDonald] expects and what we expect out of each other.”

A league-wide partnership with Warrior equipment provides skaters with gloves and helmets in team colors, but goalies have to fend for themselves. Custom pads and helmets give netminders the opportunity to show off their team spirit while showcasing their personality. Because the ECHL does not provide sufficient funds for goalie equipment, many goalies sport their college teams’ colors and logos.

Budgeting comes to a head on road trips. Often traveling by bus, away games take a much larger toll on the players than at higher levels that rely on private jets. With Portland, Maine over 7 hours from Reading by bus, the team used the time to bond in its previous up north.

“As much as sometimes we hate the bus trips, we do get a lot of laughs on the bus,” Ebbing said.

As the highest seed in the Eastern Conference, the Royals have home-ice advantage in the first three series of the postseason. Each best-of-seven series will have the first two and final two games at the home ice of the higher seed.

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“We’re not hopping on a charter jet. We’re not staying at the Four Seasons on the road,” MacDonald said. “The fact that now we only have to [travel to them] once and they have to come to us twice [is] a huge advantage.”

Instead of a traditional annual salary cap, the ECHL has a weekly salary cap of $13,900 and a weekly salary floor of $10,600. According to the league, the minimum weekly wage is $500 for rookies and $545 for returning players. If a team uses all of its cap space and pays its players the same amount, each player on a 20-man roster would earn $695 per week, which works out to a $17.38 hourly wage for a 40-hour work week.

The Royals sported 13 specialty jerseys across their 36 home games this season. Themes warranting alternate jerseys ranged from the traditional — Hockey Fights Cancer and military appreciation — to games honoring DC and Marvel comics. After each promotion night, the team auctions off the game-worn jerseys. They’re a hit in the community, as the fans at Santander Arena wear these one-time-only sweaters nearly as often as the traditional purple jerseys.

For the Royals’ annual Pink in the Rink game in February, the ice was painted pink. The team dubbed a game played on green ice “St. Hattricks Day” because it was played in mid-March.

Ebbing and Royals forward Trevor Gooch agreed that the green ice was “definitely not” the highlight of their season.

“It kind of throws everybody off a little bit.” Ebbing said.

Reading and Maine played six times this year with each team winning on home ice.

“We played well up there, too,” MacDonald said of the Royals’ games at Maine. “It’s just one of those nights where you’re not going to win every game.”

This will be the first playoff series in the new Mariners’ history. They failed to clinch a playoff spot in their inaugural 2018-19 season. In 2020, the ECHL season was halted by the pandemic before playoffs could take place. The Mariners were one of 11 teams in the league — along with the Royals — to voluntarily suspend operations during the 2020-21 season.

As for the playoffs, MacDonald said, “We’ve still got 16 games to win and it starts Wednesday.”