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When the Roanoke Valley Vipers hockey team takes the ice for the first time next month, it will do so without head coach Rick Adduono.

Adduono said he was "beaten up" over leaving the team but he may have a job opportunity "that could have arrows that point in six or seven directions for my future of moving up in hockey.

"I believe you always have to take a gamble in life."

Both Adduono and team owner Kristen Dixon said the parting was amicable.

"I cannot say enough about the Dixons, I made a commitment to them and they could have held me back if they wanted to," Adduono said by phone from his Ontario home.

The timing, however "isn't great," Dixon said, in a phone interview while she was driving home to Canton, Ohio, from Roanoke on Friday.

The hockey team opens training camp in mid-October in preparation for its Oct. 21 debut. Adduono has been recruiting players all summer. He said he hopes the players committed to the Vipers will stay with the team.

Gary Cook, the Vipers' director of player personnel who works out of his home in Thunder Bay, Ont., during the offseason, will continue to recruit and sign players, Dixon said.

She said she and her husband and partner Ken Dixon "had some challenges with some of [Adduono's] recruiting."

"We want to win a championship and we want strong players who are proven leaders on and off the ice," Dixon said.

Dixon said her husband has been looking for a replacement for Adduono for about 10 days. She said the two of them would be interviewing four candidates this weekend, all of whom have won championships.

"They're the type of coaches we like, they don't put up with shenanigans on or off the ice," Dixon said.

Adduono coached the Port Huron Beacons, last season and came with the team to Roanoke as coach and director of hockey operations.

Adduono, 50, amassed a 303-216-37 coaching record in nine seasons as a head coach.