Grizzlies had difficult breaks in tough season

WEST VALLEY CITY — The 2005-06 season, their first in the ECHL as an expansion team, was a reasonable one for the Utah Grizzlies. They made the Kelly Cup playoffs at 36-30-6 but never won a postseason game.

This season, expectations were to get better for coach Jason Christie, who had great success in six years at Peoria.

Didn't happen.

Some things were smoother, and the Grizzlies were on a playoff pace despite a number of injuries until their leading scorer, Ryan Kinasewich, went down Feb. 14 with a shoulder problem that required surgery and kept him out the rest of the season. Christie isn't even sure how well Kinasewich will recover toward next season.

Kinasewich was the ECHL goal-scoring co-champion in 2005-06 with 39. When he went down for good in 2006-07, he had 29 goals through 44 games.

"Losing Kinasewich hurt out club. We were going good," Christie said.

Utah finished 22-42-8, last in the National Conference and 24th in the 25-team league.

In the 44 games Kinasewich played, Utah was 22-16-6 and scored 3.16 goals per game. In the final 23 games without him, Utah was 4-16-3 scoring 2.0 goals a game.

There were also long-term injuries to veterans like Brad Herauf and Mike Forbes, the latter meaning the Grizzlies' defense was really young much of the season.

And with more than 300 man-games lost to injury, more than last season, "It was a trying year," said Christie. "We had some good times," he added, but not many once Kinasewich's injury cut the scoring.

The second-year Grizzly was ECHL player of the week two of the three weeks before the dislocated shoulder that kept moving out and lost strength had to be dealt with medically.

Losing Kinasewich, however, seemed to let winger-turned-defenseman Andy Sertich (47 points) shine. "It was great to see," Christie said of the rookie who was the only Grizzly on the ECHL All-Star roster. Rookie forward Jimmy Kraft played well also, Christie said.

West Valley City native D.J. Jelitto (29 points) started slowly but came on strong and "had a better year this year," Christie noted. "He got stronger in the legs." He played on all the special teams as well as a regular shift, and Christie said, "That shows him the awareness of what has to be done" in the overall game, a good learning experience.