The Florida Everblades got a hat trick from Francis Lemieux Saturday night, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Reading Royals from ending their four-game winning streak by a 5-4 margin at Germain Arena.

“This was a total unnecessary loss,” said Everblades coach Greg Poss. “It’s a shame to lose (this) game.”

It started off as expected, given the way the Blades had beaten the Royals in previous two games this week – physical and hard hitting: and it didn’t disappoint. Less than two minutes into the first period, Mike Egener started throwing punches with Royal Ryan Donald, resulting in both men receiving fighting penalties.

The fight charged the Blades, who scored first six minutes later. Alex Hutchings beat the Reading goaltender. Francis Lemieux scored the first of his hat trick near the 16-minute mark as the Blades continued to dominate the opening period of play.

Lemieux’s goal frustrated the Royals, who then took the physicality to another level by starting two separate fights as the Lemieux line was making a change. Egener was at the center of it all, again, trading blows with Royals Rob Kwiet. This time, both were ejected and the Everblades found themselves on the short end of the penalties that were handed out after the near-bench-clearing brawl that resulted in a total of four players sent to the locker rooms for the rest of the game.

Precipitating the brawl was a spear on Alexandre Imbeault, who was one of the players ejected for trying to intentionally hurt the player who speared him.

“When a guy spears me, I’m going to (retaliate),” said Imbeualt.

“What totally got that situation going was two of their players reaching over their bench,” said Poss.

Reading capitalized on the power play opportunity following the fights and the Blades’ lead was trimmed to just one goal at intermission.

To start of the second period, the Blades picked up where they left off, led by Lemieux, who scored two times within the first 2 1/2 minutes of the second period to open a comfortable 4-1 lead. Unfortunately, the Blades’ comfort level was too high. The Royals sensed the weakness and proceeded to score four times over a 10-minute stretch to take a 5-4 lead into the final intermission.

The Everblades had opportunities to tie the match and force overtime in the third period with a 5-on-3 power play chance to go along with hitting two posts, but came up short on all occasions and the Royals held on for the victory.

The Blades (25-19-2) hit the road for three matches next week against the Kalamazoo Wings of the North Division.