The 38th season of the ECHL begins on Friday with eight games, continues on Saturday with 13 games and concludes with seven games on Sunday.
The ECHL welcomes the expansion Greensboro Gargoyles for the 2025-26 season, giving the League 30 teams in 23 states and one Canadian province. Greensboro plays its first game in team history on Saturday when it hosts Jacksonville.
Friday’s schedule features a pair of rematches from the 2025 Kelly Cup Playoffs as the defending Kelly Cup champion Trois-Rivières Lions host Reading and Orlando entertains Florida. Other games on Friday’s schedule include Greenville taking on Utah, Savannah welcoming Norfolk, Indy hosting Fort Wayne, Iowa entertaining Tulsa, Kansas City taking on Rapid City and Tahoe hosting Idaho.
In addition to Greensboro, eight other teams open their home schedule on Saturday with Worcester taking on Maine, Atlanta hosting Utah, Florida welcoming Orlando, South Carolina entertaining Norfolk, Bloomington taking on Iowa, Cincinnati hosting Wheeling, Kalamazoo welcoming Fort Wayne and Wichita hosting Allen. Sunday sees Maine open its home schedule by hosting Reading.
Began in 1988-89 with five teams in four states, the ECHL has grown into a coast-to-coast league that has 30 teams in 23 states and one Canadian province playing 1,080 games from Oct. 17, 2025 to April 12, 2026. The ECHL is the third-longest tenured professional hockey league behind only the National Hockey League and the American Hockey League, and last season welcomed an average of 4,984 fans per game, marking the League’s highest per-game average in 27 years. Additionally, between the regular season and Kelly Cup Playoffs, an all-time record of 5,590,459 fans attended ECHL games.
The ECHL has affiliations with 30 teams in the National Hockey League in 2025-26, marking the 29th consecutive season that the league had affiliations with at least 20 teams in the NHL.
New faces behind the benches
Fourteen of the 30 ECHL teams will have a new coach in charge as the 2025-26 season gets underway.
Sylvain Cloutier takes charge as the new head coach in Adirondack, returning to Glens Falls where he played for the Red Wings in the American Hockey League and the IceHawks and Frostbite in the United Hockey League.
Steve Martinson, who previously coached Allen from 2012-22, returns behind the bench for the Americans after spending last season as head coach for Athens in the Federal Prospects Hockey League.
In Atlanta, Matt Ginn assumes the head-coaching position after serving as the team’s assistant coach in 2024-25.
After spending the last four seasons as an assistant coach in Kansas City, Riley Weselowski is the new man in charge for Cincinnati, returning to the Cyclones where he was a player in 2015-16.
Scott Burt is the first head coach in Greensboro Gargoyles’ team history, after spending the last four seasons as head coach in Rapid City.
Chad Costello brings two years of ECHL head-coaching experience to Greenville. Costello went 70-67-7 as head coach in Allen from 2022-24.
Iowa’s new head coach is Chuck Weber, who previously led Cincinnati to Kelly Cup titles in 2008 and 2010.
In Maine, Rick Kowalsky returns to the ECHL has the new head coach for the Mariners. A 2017 inductee into the ECHL Hall of Fame, Kowalsky captained Trenton to the 2005 Kelly Cup title, and earned the John Brophy Award as ECHL Coach of the Year as Trenton’s head coach in 2008-09.
Matt Macdonald, who was head coach in Cincinnati from 2014-18, takes over the head role in Orlando after serving as an assistant coach in the American Hockey League with Grand Rapids and Bridgeport over the last seven seasons.
The new head coach in Rapid City is Dave Smith, who has spent the previous 20 seasons as a head coach in college hockey with Canisius College (2005-17) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2017-25).
Anthony Peters, who has been an assistant coach in Reading the past two seasons, takes over as head coach in Reading.
David Warskofsky gets his first head coaching opportunity in South Carolina, following in the footsteps of his brother, Ryan, who was Stingrays head coach from 2016-18, and enters his second season as head coach of the National Hockey League’s San Jose Sharks.
In Utah, John Becanic takes over as head coach after spending the last two seasons as head coach of the National Collegiate Development Conference’s Idaho Falls Spud Kings.
The new head coach in Wheeling is Ryan Papaioannou, who gets his first professional coaching job after going 907-217-48 in 1,172 career games as coach of the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Brooks Bandits.
Approaching milestones
Adirondack’s Justin Taylor begins the season just 18 games shy of passing Michael Pelech for the most games played in ECHL history. Taylor, who is also ninth in ECHL history with 290 goals and tied for 14th with 571, needs 10 goals to become just the eighth player to reach 300 career goals and 29 points to become the ninth member of the 600-point club.
Allen’s Matt Register is ninth on the ECHL’s all-time games played with 683 while he ranks fourth all-time with 431 assists. With 17 games played, Register will become the seventh player in league history to appear in at last 700 games, and with 48 assists he will move into second place all-time.
Florida goaltender Cam Johnson enters the 2025-26 season with 17 career shutouts, which is eighth all-time. With five shutouts, he would move into third place on the all-time list. Johnson’s 118 career wins is 20th in ECHL history.
On the coaching front, Florida’s Brad Ralph, who is the league’s all-time leader with 105 career postseason wins, enters the season third all-time with 535 regular-season wins.
Allen’s Steve Martinon is right behind Ralph on the all-time wins list with 518.
Tulsa’s Rob Murray enters the season fourth all-time with 998 games coached and tied for fifth with 491 wins. Murray is nine victories away from becoming just the fifth coach in ECHL history to reach the 500-win plateau.
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