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Brad Ralph is giving his all coaching the Florida Everblades
(Courtesy: @FL_Everblades/Twitter)

Brad Ralph is giving his all coaching the Florida Everblades

ESTERO, Fla. — Estero’s Florida Everblades minor league ice hockey team had a strong 2020-21 season. The team won the Brabham Cup for having the best regular season record, but they lost in the conference semifinals to the South Carolina Stingrays.

Brad Ralph will be returning for his sixth season as the team’s head coach. Ralph has shown himself to be one of the best coaches in the ECHL and is aiming to bring the Everblades their first Kelly Cup championship since 2012.

Ralph’s work with the Florida Everblades has helped the team become one of the most competitive in the ECHL. His developmental work has also helped get many of these players ready to compete with the Nashville Predators in the NHL. Ralph understands the needs that his players hold, as he was once a professional player himself.

Ralph played professional hockey from 2000 to 2009. He only played one NHL game with the Phoenix Coyotes in the 2000-01 season. He spent much of his playing career in the ECHL with teams like the Augusta Lynx, Columbia Inferno and Charlotte Checkers.

He was the head coach of a few other teams after retiring from playing. He coached the SPHL’s Augusta RiverHawks and the ECHL Idaho Steelheads. He also spent a year coaching the Kelowna Rockets, a junior hockey team in British Columbia.

Ralph started coaching the Everblades in 2016 when the team was the ECHL affiliate of the Carolina Hurricanes. The team switched its affiliation to the Nashville Predators in 2019, who the team remains affiliated to this day.

The Everblades have reached the playoffs in every year that Ralph has coached the team. The team’s furthest run came in 2018 when the club won the Brabham Cup with a 53-13-2-4 record. The team reached the Kelly Cup finals, but they lost in seven games to the Colorado Eagles. Ralph won the ECHL’s award for the best coach in the league that year.

The 2020 team was also in contention for the Brabham Cup, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the rest of the season and the playoffs that year. The team would make another playoff run in 2021 in a season where most of the teams suspended operations due to fan attendance limitations. Everblades’ goaltender Jake Hildebrand was named the league’s top goaltender that season. He currently plays with a semi-professional team in Frankfurt, Germany.

The 2021-22 season will see the ECHL return to some sense of normalcy. All 27 teams will be competing in the ECHL once again, and pandemic-related limitations will not be as substantial as they had been in the past. Ralph has high hopes for bringing the Everblades back to the playoffs. He and the rest of the Everblades will have up to 7,000 fans cheering them on at the Hertz Arena in Estero at every home game throughout the season.

This is an unedited user writing submission. The views, information, or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Best Version Media or its employees.