| Former East Coast Hockey League team in Richmond, Virginia. The team was founded in 1990 by Virginia Beach businessman Allan Harvie, and suspended operations at the end of the 2002-2003 season. The team was a member of the Northeast Division of the ECHL's Northern Conference, and played home games at the Richmond Coliseum. The Renegades won the Riley Cup in 1995 as league champions (a trophy later renamed the Kelly Cup), the Brabham Cup in 1996 as regular season champs, and the Northern Conference championship in 1999 (losing the Kelly Cup Finals to the Mississippi Sea Wolves). Replaced by the Richmond RiverDogs of the United Hockey League.
From the time of the Gades' inception, a fierce rivalry with the Hampton Roads Admirals kept seats full in Richmond and Norfolk, but the Admirals moved up to the American Hockey League in 2000. Afterwards, team management attempted to build new rivalries with Roanoke and Trenton, but never did manage to find another visitor that could draw 10,000 fans per night, 5 nights per year. Attendance sank with the loss of the rival and with several profiteering moves by Coliseum managers Spectacor and by the City of Richmond (worst among them being a $1/ticket tax levied by the city in the midst of the attendance slide). Instead of actually folding the franchise, the ownership technically took the franchise dormant, hoping to wait a year or two until a new, lower-cost arena is built in suburban Chesterfield County. As a Richmond hockey fan and former resident of Chesterfield County, I very highly doubt that said arena will be built, or that we'll ever see the Renegades again. | 
