Grizzlies moving in right direction

With just two home games left in the regular season — Monday and Wednesday hosting Bakersfield — it's a certainty that the Double-A level ECHL version of the Utah Grizzlies will fall short of the attendance figures they had the three previous years in the AAA-level AHL.

He wishes it was more, but team owner Dave Elmore is satisfied with his first year in the lower league because the costs for personnel and travel are much lower and because he sees renewed rivalries with teams in Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego and Long Beach as more palatable to fans than games against teams from the eastern time zone.

"We need to draw more but it's a good step in the right direction," Elmore said recently by telephone, adding that the team needs to build on its corporate marketing as well as trying to draw individuals and families and will try to reach out to those who may not be considered traditional hockey fans.

Reported attendance figures for the first 34 games of 2005-06 have Utah standing 16th in the ECHL, drawing 3,853 a game, compared to reported figures for 2004-05 of 4,800 in Utah's last season in the AHL. In 2003-04, the Grizzlies reported 5,672 a game, and in 2002-03 it was 6,353. The leagues use the reported attendance figures.

Other Grizzlies' numbers also show a bit of a downturn with the lower-level league, though the Grizzlies have qualified for the playoffs this year for the first time since 2002-03, and Elmore considers that part of the rebuilding process.

Team figures that include only sold tickets — no comps and no suite tickets — give the Grizz 2,259 a game this season, 2,454 last season, 3,063 in 2003-04 and 2,779 in 2002-03.

Elmore doesn't seem to expect to reach the 6,000 or 7,000 level that was once possible in the Salt Lake area. "I'd love to see that," he said, "but if over a period of two or three years we could build it back to 4,500-5,000, I'd be very pleased."

That would be a profitable number.

"Oh yes," Elmore said.

"I'm never going to make enough money to recover all the money I've lost, but we could be modestly in the black, and that would be really nice.

"It would be nice for the building (E Center, which his company operates for West Valley City), for ourselves personally and so forth, because it's better for the community when we get more people there. That's the whole idea."