YUNET HOLMES Scott Hotham of the Everblades cranks a slap shot in Saturday’s final ECHL preseason game against the Gwinnett Gladiators at Germain Arena.

The Florida Everblades’ two games at Germain Arena against division rival Gwinnett meant nothing – they were preseason games.

“The bottom line is it’s good to get off to a good start, even though it’s preseason,” said Everblade Earnie Hartlieb, who scored twice in Saturday night’s 6-5 win.

Though preseason games have no meaning as far as wins and losses, they are the only chance for a coaching staff to evaluate players in game situations, and to find out where team strengths and weaknesses are.

When offensive stars Kevin Baker, Peter Metcalf, Jacob Micflikier, Ryan Lang and Milan Gajic rejoined Blades coach Malcolm Cameron for another go at a Kelly Cup, everyone knows the Blades will be an offensive powerhouse again this season. The 12 goals they scored in their two exhibition games bears that out.

The surprise is the number of goals they gave up – nine – particularly considering the Blades are bigger, and presumably better, defensively and in the net.

“I didn’t like the way we played defensively,” said Cameron. “We had a 4-1 lead and then we kind of changed the way we played. We started looking for goals, playing kind of high risk hockey and looking for goals where there weren’t goals.”

Cameron was referring to the 4-1 lead the Blades had early in the second period. They were looking dominant offensively and defensively when turnovers led to a pair of Gladiator goals midway through the period, allowing scrappy Gwinnett back in the game.

“The good news is we were able to battle back every time and get another (goal) to give us a cushion and that’s a testament to a good hockey club,” said Cameron.

“Goal scoring, obviously, won’t be an issue,” he added. “If we can get everybody committed to defense like we did last year You know we were the top scoring team in the league and gave up the least amount of goals as well, so we know (we) can do both. That’s what we are looking for and we are obviously going to start working on that deficiency right now.”

The Everblades begin their regular season on the road, for the first time in six years, with three games in three days beginning Friday at the Toledo Walleye.

Their home debut is Oct. 23-24 with back-to-back games against Charlotte to start a five-game homestand.