SOUTHAVEN, Miss. – Last week, the Mississippi Surge released head coach/general manager Steffon Walby from his job in search of a new direction. Thursday afternoon, their new neighbors to the north did likewise.
In a late afternoon release, the Mississippi RiverKings announced that head coach 
Paul Gardner had been relieved of his duties effective immediately. The team will begin the process of finding a new coach with less than three months until it opens its 20th season of play and first in the SPHL in late October.
According to Dave “Ab” Mattice, the RiverKings’ general manager, the move was made necessary by the franchise’s move to the lower-budget SPHL.
“Really it’s more of a financial thing. (Moving) from the pay scale levels of the Central Hockey League to the SPHL basically was the main reasoning,” Mattice said. “To try to fit into the model the SPHL has, we had to make some changes and budget adjustments and unfortunately that was one of them.”
Gardner, 55, had been with the RiverKings since last December when he took over the reigns of the team in the wake of Kevin Kaminski’s dismissal. Under Gardner’s guidance, the RiverKings finished the 2010-2011 season with a 30-31-5 record before falling in the first round of the CHL playoffs to the Tulsa Oilers. Prior to arriving in Southaven, Gardner had been the coach of the Hamburg Freezers of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga in Germany.
Mattice said that the ownership felt that the lower salary offer in the SPHL would have been “embarrassing” so they chose to simply release Gardner without tendering the new salary offer. He praised Gardner for the job he did in taking the RiverKings to the post-season a season ago.
“We thank Coach Gardner for taking over leadership of our team in the middle of last season and for doing such a great job for us,” Mattice said. “We wish him all the best in the future.”
Mattice said that the search for a new coach is underway. He expects it to move rapidly due to the fact that the new bench boss will have to hit the ground running when it comes to player recruitment.
“We’ve talked to several candidates and hope to have something wrapped up here by Monday, Wednesday at the latest,” he said. “We don’t want to drag the search on too long because we need to keep going on the recruiting.”
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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