RiverKings fight for conference lead

SOUTHAVEN, Mississippi — The beginning of Kevin “Killer” Kaminsky’s second full season as head coach of the Mississippi RiverKings started with a 6-3 loss to a bulked up Tulsa Oilers, a 5-3 win over the Wichita Thunder and then a 5-2 loss to the Amarillo Gorillas.
 
Follow that up with two consecutive wins against the league champion Texas Brahmas and then a 4-3 loss to the Thunder and you get a picture of the roller coaster ride the season has been thus far. But as the original “Killer”, Jerry Lee Lewis sang, “Life has its little ups and downs.”
 
Yet, after 12 games, the Mississippi RiverKings (6-6-0, 12 Points) sit atop the Central Hockey League’s Northern Conference, just behind the Colorado Eagles (6-0-1, 13 points).
 

Kaminsky, the reigning CHL Coach of the Year, led his team to a trip to last season’s Northern Conference Finals, a brutal six-game series against the Eagles that looked like it would end in a sweep. But the RiverKings clenched their teeth and their sticks to force a Game Five after a 6-5 double-overtime duel settled in the end by RiverKings forward Matt Summers.
 
Two games later, Mississippi‘s season was over, but Kevin Kaminsky was soon back at work planning for the 2009-10 RiverKings, their 18^th season. With less players heading to Europe this season and changes in the makeup of the CHL, there was no shortage of players available but also no shortage of competition between coaches to lure those players to their respective teams.        “It was tough but I tried to prioritize and get the guys I wanted,” Kaminsky said. “There were a lot of guys out there that I would love to have, but I couldn’t have either.”
 
Kaminsky found that his tried and true methods worked out well as he sought to retain some of his best players as well as recruit new ones.
 
“I stick to my people that I know and try and use the buddy system as much as possible,” Kaminsky said. “It obviously worked out with Held, Campbell and the Makway situation – they were looking to go overseas but I eventually got Campbell done and Held, and Makway soon followed.”
 
In the end, Kaminsky re-signed a solid group of players from the past season, along with some great prospects for this one and thus far, he’s happy with his teams’ performance.
 
“I feel that our veterans, Landmesser and Makway are back there doing a great job with the power play, defensively, and then you’ve got Dumont and Severson who’ve been around,” Kaminsky said. “They’ve won championships; Severson’s played in the NHL and the American League. He knows what it takes. And then you’ve got Held and Campbell, Chaumont, Jarman; you know, we’ve got the firepower there too. And then we’ve got the grinders and guys who can be physical and chip in as well with, you know, like Stoddard and Margeson. Then we’ve got Pierce, Summers and Lackner back on the point, so I feel we have some great depth as well.”
 
With the loss of their Northeast Division rivals, the Oklahoma City Blazers, and in fact, the loss of divisions overall, the RiverKings find themselves in a seven team Northern Conference and are almost assured a spot in the playoffs. But Kaminsky knows nothing is guaranteed.
 
“ You’ve got to play your best hockey to get in, all year long. You have to have that consistency, that desperation every night,” Kaminsky said.
 
Having suffered some big losses to teams like Tulsa and Amarillo who are enjoying resurgence this season have supported the idea that you can’t take a night off in today’s Central Hockey League.
 
“That’s just the depth in the league,” Kaminsky said. “You’ve got to come to compete every night, you can’t just play like this against good teams, you’ve got to play like this against teams that never made the playoffs because everyone’s got that depth, everyone has a great line-up this year, so every game counts. You need to scratch and claw for every two points or a point that you can get every night.”
 
Contact the author/photographer at robert.keith@prohockeynews.com