Royals Agree To Terms with Forward Ian Watters

Reading, PA – The Reading Royals of the ECHL, affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL, today announced that the team has agreed to terms with forward Ian Watters. Watters is the second player announced as signed by the Royals to an ECHL Standard Players Contract for the 2016-17 season, joining forward Olivier Labelle.

This will mark the fourth stint in Reading for Watters (6’0/191) (24), who hails from Pickering, Ontario. Last year, he registered twenty-one points (7g-14a) and ninety-nine penalty minutes in sixty-eight regular season games with the Royals. Watters, who will be entering his fifth season of pro, ended the regular season with the second most penalty minutes on the team and led players on the end-of-season active roster with 157 shots on goal. Watters, who served as one of the Royals’ alternate captains last year, completed the season with four points (2g-2a) in twelve post-season games during Reading’s 2016 playoff run. His playoff goals included what proved to be the game winner in Game Two of the first round Eastern Conference Quarterfinal series against the Toledo Walleye.

Watters joined the Royals in the 2013-14 season, which was unfortunately cut short for him when he sustained what proved to be a season-ending injury in his seventh game with the team. In 2014-15, Watters racked up twenty-five points (4g-21a) and seventy-five penalty minutes in fifty-seven regular season games with Reading. He also registered three assists in the seven playoff games played against the South Carolina Stingrays in the 2015 East Division Semi-Finals. Watters’ 132 career games with the Royals (11g-36a=47pts) is seventeenth most in team history—one more than Andrew Sarauer and one fewer than Shawn Germain. Watters, who engaged in three tilts last season, has registered 174 career penalty minutes with the Royals, which is twenty-third all time. In four seasons of pro, Watters has played in 195 career regular season games, registering eighty-seven total points (28g-59a) and 249 penalty minutes.

Prior to turning pro, Watters spent three full seasons with the Brampton Battalion in the Ontario Hockey League, scoring forty-five goals and assisting on fifty-two others (ninety-seven points) over a span of 159 games. In 2010-11, he was second on the Battalion with twenty goals in sixty-eight games. In his final season of major junior, 2011-12, Watters, who served as an alternate captain for the Battalion, recorded thirty points (16g-14a) despite only playing in thirty-four games in a season that was disrupted by injury. Prior to joining Brampton, Watters played one season with the Ajax Attack in the Ontario Junior Hockey League. That year, he led the Attack with thirty-one goals (and seventy-nine points) in forty-six games and was selected as the OJHL Rookie of the Year in the Ruddock Division.

Season Tickets for the 2016-17 Reading Royals ECHL season are currently available. Call 610-898-7825 for more information or log onto www.royalshockey.com.