June 21, 2006- The Cedar Rapids RoughRiders today released their 2006-07 schedule. The Riders will open the 60-game regular season at home on Saturday, October 7, at 7:05PM against the Green Bay Gamblers.

The opener is the first of 28 weekend home games for the Riders. The Riders will play 18 Saturday games at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena and 10 Friday contests on home ice. All 30 Rider home games will face off at 7:05PM.

“Our home schedule is certainly going to be great for our fans this season,” said RoughRiders Vice President of Operations Jim Calpin. “The chance to play so many weekend games is obviously something we are very excited about.”

The 2006-07 United States Hockey League season will open and end later than have prior campaigns. The regular season will kick off on the first weekend of October and will not conclude until mid-April.

Beginning with their opener, the Riders will be in action at home each of the first five Saturday nights of the season. The Riders will play on the road each of the first four Friday evenings of the campaign.

The Riders will meet the defending Clark Cup champion Des Moines Buccaneers- the team that knocked the Riders out of last spring’s playoffs- for the first time on Friday, October 27 in Urbandale. One night later, the Riders and Bucs will complete a home-and-home series as the Bucs make their first visit of the season to Cedar Rapids. The Bucs have shifted from the East Division to the West this season with the arrival of a twelfth USHL team, an as yet unnamed Columbus, Ohio, expansion team.

The Riders will encounter the league’s newest member for the first time when they head to Nationwide Arena (also home of the National Hockey League’s Columbus Blue Jackets) for games on Saturday, November 11 and Sunday, November 12. Columbus will make its first trip to Cedar Rapids the following weekend for games with the Riders on Friday, November 17 and Saturday, November 18.

The Riders’ traditional Thanksgiving week home-and-home with the Waterloo Black Hawks will kick-start the season series between the two rivals. This year the Riders will visit Waterloo on Thanksgiving night, November 23, before hosting the Hawks the following evening. Up until this season, the Riders and Hawks had annually met in Cedar Rapids the night before Thanksgiving.

The Riders and Black Hawks will meet a total of eight times. The I-380 rivals will ring in 2007 in each other’s company as the Riders visit Young Arena on New Year’s Eve. On Saturday, January 27, the Black Hawks will travel to Cedar Rapids for the second time. The season series will shift back to Waterloo on Saturday, March 3. The Riders and Hawks will close out March with a second home-and-home series, meeting in Cedar Rapids on Friday night, March 30, and in Waterloo 24 hours later. On Saturday, April 14, the Riders and Hawks will finish the regular season with one more head-to-head meeting, this one in Cedar Rapids.

While they will collide with the Black Hawks on eight occasions, the Riders will play each of their other four East Division rivals- Chicago, Columbus, Green Bay and Indiana- seven times. The Riders will face the six clubs in the West Division (Des Moines, Lincoln, Omaha, Sioux City, Sioux Falls and Tri-City) four times each.

Other schedule highlights:

• On Friday, December 1, the Indiana Ice will take on the RoughRiders in Cedar Rapids- the first meeting between the two teams since the Riders eliminated the Ice in the first round of last spring’s Clark Cup playoffs.
• The Riders will play 11 games in March, making it the club’s busiest month. The Riders will play ten games in December, nine in November, January and February, seven in October and five in April.
• The RoughRiders will enjoy their longest home stand when they play six straight games at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena from January 12 through January 27.
• The six game home stand will come on the heels of the Riders’ longest stretch of consecutive road games. The Riders will play four in a row away from home from December 31 through January 9.
• The Riders will play three games in three nights three times. Their first such stretch begins Thanksgiving night (November 23) in Waterloo, continues one night later at home against the Black Hawks and concludes in Green Bay on Saturday, November 25. The Riders face a pair of “three-in-three” stretches in December. The Riders will visit Tri-City for games Friday, December 15 and Saturday, December 16 before playing their final game before the USHL’s holiday break on Sunday, December 17 in Sioux City. The Riders return from the break with a pair of home games against Green Bay (Friday, December 29 and Saturday, December 30) and then travel an hour north for their New Year’s Eve date with the Black Hawks.
• The RoughRiders will be busy on and around holidays this season. In November, the Riders will visit Columbus on Veterans’ Day and play the Thanksgiving week home-and-home series with Waterloo. The Riders will also visit Waterloo on New Year’s Eve. The Riders will hope the luck of the Irish is with them when they host Columbus on St. Patrick’s Day- Friday, March 17.
• The Riders will try to avoid black cats and broken mirrors while twice playing games on Friday the thirteenth. The Riders visit Chicago on October 13 and travel to Indiana on April 13.

Now closing in on their eighth season in Cedar Rapids, the RoughRiders are the two time defending East Division champions. 2006-07 season tickets are currently available through the RoughRiders’ business office (247-0340). Fans who pay for season tickets in full before August 15 will receive a significant discount in addition to a host of other benefits available exclusively to season ticket holders.

Single game tickets will go on sale on a date to be determined in September.

2006-07 Cedar Rapids RoughRiders Schedule

ALL HOME GAMES START AT 7:05PM; AWAY GAME TIMES TBA