Grizzlies look to build off success, improve

For an expansion team with so many injuries that only two players — Chad Starling and Brad Herauf — skated in all 76 games, the Utah Grizzlies acquitted themselves pretty well with a 36-30-6 record in the ECHL's toughest division, the West.

The other newcomers, Stockton (18-40-14, Pacific) and Phoenix (20-47-5, West), were last in their divisions and had no hope of making the playoffs.

"All in all, I thought we gave ourselves a good run," said coach Jason Christie, who came to Utah last summer after five years running Peoria of the ECHL. "This is just a good year that we can build off of."

Now comes the real work.

"Next year will be a big year," Christie says, knowing fans and owner Dave Elmore expect to win. "We have to make sure we build off this year and move forward, especially in this division."

The summer will be important, too, as Christie pursues the kind of players needed to fill in around a core group he already has.

"It will be a big recruiting summer for us," he said, emphasizing that defensemen will be his first objective, and he will look to colleges and junior leagues as well as free agents.

And he will most likely pursue an NHL affiliation for Utah, which was independent last season.

Elmore, who was unhappy with NHL parent teams Dallas and Phoenix over the last three or four years that the Grizzlies were in the American Hockey League, has told the Deseret Morning News several times this spring that he's amenable to finding an affiliate, should Christie so desire.

Christie, who's had six straight winning ECHL seasons, said he's going to look into an NHL partnership.

"We're going to look at all the options, definitely. That's the No. 1 thing to look at," he said, though he can't get going on it until probably late June, after all the teams have finished playoffs and other business.

With Utah having so many injuries last season — nine knee injuries, for one thing, and times when so many defensemen were out that forwards had to become blueliners for long stretches of time — Christie found it difficult to come up with bodies. "Having only three 'D' for weeks at a time, it wears on them," he said.

But players of proper skill just aren't available in midseason, and he sometimes had to trade two or three players to get one he needed.