SOUTHAVEN, MS — The Mississippi RiverKings of the Central Hockey League announced today that the team will venture outside of its own league this October. The RiverKings will play the Florida Everblades of the ECHL in a pair of exhibition games at the Germain Arena in Estero, FL on Thursday, October 11 and Friday, October 12.  This will be the first time in the team’s history that the RiverKings have faced an ECHL team and the second time they have faced a team outside the CHL in interleague preseason games. 

"The games with the Everblades will be good tools to evaluate the players that we will have in camp,” RiverKings Head Coach and Director of Hockey Operations Kevin McClelland said.  “I know that their organization has a tradition of playing good hockey just like ours, so it should be a good measuring stick.  For our guys that have been here for a few years, it will also be a good experience to play against a team from another league in a totally different city and arena."    

The RiverKings will begin the 16th season of CHL hockey in the Mid-South in October.  The RiverKings are coming off a season where they finished the regular season with 39 wins, the most since 02-03 and the third most in the franchise’s history.  The team also made a return to the playoffs for the first time since 2003 and advanced to the Northern Conference finals before falling to the eventual President’s Cup champion Colorado Eagles.   

The Everblades will be playing their tenth season in the ECHL beginning this fall.  In the 2006-2007 campaign, the Everblades finished the regular season with a 44-22-4 mark, won the ECHL South Division crown, but fell in seven games in the American Conference Finals to the Dayton Bombers.  The Everblades have finished 10 or more games above .500 in each of their previous nine seasons and were runners-up in the Kelly Cup Finals in 2004 and 2005. 

"We are thrilled to be playing the RiverKings in the preseason this year," Everblades President and General Manager Craig Brush said.  "We really think this is a unique opportunity for the two organizations, and we also are excited to give our fans a chance to see hockey from another league at Germain Arena.  The RiverKings, like the Everblades, have a proven track record of success over the past few years and it should be fun to see these two teams face-off."

Both games will begin at 7:30 eastern time.  This will be the first time that the Everblades have played a team outside of their league.  The only other time the RiverKings played a team outside the CHL in a preseason game was prior to the 1999-2000 season.  That season, the team held training camp in Tupelo, MS and played the Tupelo T-Rex of the pre-merger WPHL.