By John Packett
Renegades Writer

If the Richmond Renegades want to have any chance at finishing first in the Southern Professional Hockey League regular-season standings, they will have to root hard for the Jacksonville Barracudas.

That’s because first-place Columbus still has six games remaining with sixth-place Jacksonville. The Cottonmouths have beaten the Barracudas six of seven times already this season.

Although Columbus only leads Knoxville by one point, the Cottonmouths have three games in hand on the Ice Bears and five in hand on the Renegades. Fourth-place Huntsville is four points behind and Columbus on two games in hand on the Havoc.

The reason the Cottonmouths have so many games with Jacksonville goes back to the revamping of the schedule when the Florida Seals folded in January. Because Jacksonville is Columbus’ closest rival, several of the games that would have been with Florida were changed to Jacksonville.

“I just find it unusual to have 10 of their last 23 games against any one team,“ said Allan B. Harvie, Jr., Richmond’s president and general manager.  “Yeah, there’s some quirks in the schedule because of Florida, but that’s a really big quirk in the schedule.“

Bill Coffey, director of hockey operations for the SPHL, said the reason behind the unbalanced schedule was, “Everybody was trying to save money and travel expenses,“ when the new schedule was put in place.

The Renegades were supposed to have played at Jacksonsville on March 6, for example, but that game was erased from Richmond’s schedule and replaced with Columbus at Jacksonville.

Richmond has 11 games left, starting with Friday’s contest against Knoxville at the Coliseum. The Renegades will probably have to win at least seven of them in order to finish among the top three in the league and have home-ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs.

The game with Knoxville is Richmond’s only one this weekend, so the Renegades will have to watch the scoreboard as teams around them either gain ground or stay where they are.

Finishing first is a huge advantage because one plays six in the first round, while the other four teams battle through a pair of best-of-threes to see who plays the one-six winner in the President’s Cup final.