WEST VALLEY CITY — The Utah Grizzlies are now on the market and could be on the move, a year after Utah secured a National Hockey League franchise.

In an open letter to fans, the Grizzlies announced Sunday evening they’ve started the “formal process to explore a potential sale of the team” and that it could “ultimately lead to the relocation” of the ECHL franchise.

“This step comes with deep reflection and heartfelt appreciation for a community that has embraced the Grizzlies for nearly three decades,” the team wrote. “From championship runs and Olympic legacy to countless unforgettable nights at the Maverik Center, the Grizzlies have been proud to call Utah home.”

No sales or relocation decisions have been finalized yet, but the franchise is no stranger to moving.

The Grizzlies first existed as an AHL franchise that relocated from Denver to Salt Lake City in 1995 after Denver landed the Quebec Nordiques NHL team, which became the Colorado Avalanche, a year after the Grizzlies formed. The team ultimately relocated again to Ohio in 2005, where it remains today as the Cleveland Monsters.

Utah gained an ECHL franchise in 2005, though. What was first the Nashville South Stars in 1981, serving as the Central Hockey League affiliate for the Minnesota North Stars, ended up in Utah after a series of relocations. It’s currently an ECHL affiliate of the Avalanche.

However, longtime owner Dave Elmore died in 2023, and his wife and co-owner, Donna Tuttle, has been in “declining health,” the team explained in its letter. As such, the family has struggled to “remain actively involved in team operations,” it added.

Sunday’s announcement also comes a month after the death of the team’s president and CEO, Kevin Bruder.

“This is an emotional and difficult moment for our family and our organization,” Elmore Sports Group said in a statement. “Utah has been more than a home — it has been part of our identity. But ensuring the Grizzlies have the opportunity to thrive in the future may require new ownership and, potentially, a new home.”

Any potential relocation is subject to approval from the ECHL. The team said it plans to “continue conversations” with the league and local leaders so they stay in the loop.

The team will still have at least one more season in the Maverik Center, with its 2025-26 season starting on Oct. 17 at the Greenville Swamp Rabbits before its Oct. 24 home opener against Idaho.

The announcement also comes after Utah joined the NHL ranks for the first time ever last year. Ryan and Ashley Smith acquired the Arizona Coyotes in a deal that relocated the franchise to Utah. The team officially became the Mammoth last month.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League released its 2025 Draft eligibility list on May 15. Included on the list are Rory Guilday ’25, Lily Delianedis ’25 and Katie Chan ’25, three recent Cornell graduates who this winter helped lead the Red to its first ECAC title since 2014 and the Frozen Four. The draft — which will begin at 7 p.m. on June 24 and last six rounds — is the PWHL’s second entry draft and will be the first to include Vancouver and Seattle, the league’s first expansion teams. 

Rory Guilday, Defender

Stats

2024-2025: five goals, four assists

Collegiately: 19 goals, 33 assists

Accolades: ECAC Hockey All-Rookie Team; US College Hockey Online All-Rookie Team; All Ivy-League second team; Two-time First Team All-Ivy; Third Team All-ECAC Hockey.

Like Izzy Daniel ’24, Cornell’s lone pick in last year’s PWHL entry draft, Guilday is projected to be taken at the end of the first round or the start of the second. However, Daniel ended up sliding to pick No. 18 over concerns around her smaller stature and lack of national team experience. Guilday, meanwhile, checks both of those boxes. At 5’11, Guilday is able to dominate forwards with her physical playstyle, a skill that will translate well in the PWHL. Plus, her 38 games with Team USA have given her plenty of experience competing with the best players in the world. 

Guilday’s only weakness might be her lack of offensive output compared to other top defensive prospects, such as Clarkson graduates Haley Winn and Nicole Gosling. And yet, her powerful slap shot should be enough to generate offense at the next level. A dominant blueliner on one of the best defenses in the nation, Guilday easily projects as a top pick in this year’s draft and a rotation constant in the PWHL.

Best Fits: Ottawa or Boston (lost key defenders in the PWHL expansion draft); Vancouver (Vancouver General Manager Cara Gardner Morey was previously the head coach at Princeton, which is in the ECAC with Cornell, so she should have the best scouting report on Guilday). 

The Hockey News Mock Draft: Round 1, Pick 5 Ottawa Charge

Rinksiders.com Mock Draft: Round 1, Pick 5 Ottawa Charge

Eli’s Projection: Round 1, Pick 5 Ottawa Charge

Lily Delianedis, Forward

Stats

2024-2025: 12 goals, 10 assists

Collegiately: 53 goals, 57 assists

Accolades: ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Year; ECAC Hockey All-Rookie Team; Second Team All-Ivy.

A key cog in Cornell’s offensive machine all four of her years on East Hill, Delianedis never failed to post double digit goals and assists with her lowest point total — a still impressive 22 — coming during her senior season. While Delianedis isn’t afraid to work from behind the goal on offense, this year she scored most of her goals with her wrist shot around the circles or in the high slot. Delianedis is also a hard worker on the defensive end of the ice, a trait which should boost her draft stock in a league where all-around ability is prioritized. 

While Delianedis’ lack of goal scoring (especially in her senior season) would seemingly limit her draft upside, analytically she is among the best forwards in the draft class. Delianedis ranks sixth among PWHL draft declared forwards in Corsi — an advanced stat that measures the difference in shot attempts for or against a player’s team when they are on the ice. While Delianedis projects as a mid to late round pick, it would not be a big surprise if a team decides to draft the Minnesotan in an earlier round after falling in love with her advanced analytics and well-rounded play style. 

Best Fits: Tough to determine, but possible candidates include Boston (needs forward depth); New York (also needs forward depth); Minnesota (hometown pick); Vancouver (General manager was head coach at Princeton).

The Hockey News Mock Draft: Not drafted in the first two rounds

The Hockey News PWHL Draft Player Rankings: 36 

Rinksiders.com Mock Draft: Not drafted in first three rounds, first player listed in “Just Missed”

Eli’s Projection: Likely the fourth or fifth round. Round 4, Pick 2 Boston Fleet

Katie Chan, Forward

Stats (2021-2023 at Colgate, 2023-2025 at Cornell)

2024-2025: 9 goals, 10 assists

Collegiately: 34 goals, 42 assists

A scrappy, hardworking forward who featured on Cornell’s most dangerous line during her senior season, Chan endeared herself to the Lynah Faithful despite spending just two years on East Hill after transferring from Colgate. The British Columbian’s greatest strength is her effort — at any given moment Chan is usually found pestering an opposition’s defenders while forechecking or trying to shovel the puck into the net from around the crease any way she can. 

Like Delianedis, the analytics think Chan is underrated. She ranks in the top-20 nationally in Corsi, despite failing to make an All-Ivy team. The biggest issue for Chan when it comes to the PWHL is her size and playstyle. At 5’2, Chan has spent her entire collegiate career successfully playing as an undersized forward. Still, her small frame and the PWHL’s physical nature makes her a risky pick. Similarly, her gritty style of play could have trouble adapting to the highly skilled professional level. So while Chan helped anchor Cornell’s offense, it’s not likely she will be drafted come Tuesday. 

The Hockey News PWHL Draft Player Rankings: 82

Eli’s prediction: Undrafted, offered training camp invite as an Undrafted Free Agent

A final note: The Sun’s 2024 Female Athlete of the Year — Izzy Daniel ’24 — was selected with the eighth pick of the PWHL expansion draft last week by Vancouver. The selection of the 2024 Patty Kazmaier award winner was a bit of a surprise, but makes sense considering that Vancouver General Manager Cara Gardner Morey was previously the head coach at Princeton. Daniel scored two goals and registered eight assists in eight games against the Tigers while playing for Cornell.  

The second PWHL entry draft will last six rounds and begin on June 24 at 7 p.m. It can be streamed live for free on the league’s YouTube channel or on The Sports Network in Canada.

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The dream of many scholastic athletes is to get an opportunity to play at the next level, earning a college degree in the process.

It is no secret that the Pacers-Thunder NBA Finals has been something less than a ratings bonanza. The first five games averaged 9.18 million viewers, the worst five-game average for the Finals in the Nielsen people meter era (1988-present), save for Lakers-Heat in the fall 2020 “bubble” — a months-delayed, fanless, neutral site series that had to compete with the NFL, the election, and a presidential hospital stay.

Pacers-Thunder has thus far averaged about the same audience as the 2023 Rangers-Diamondbacks World Series — an infamously low-rated matchup that averaged 9.11 million for its full five-game run — and that is despite Nielsen expanding its out-of-home viewership sample earlier this year.

What has been particularly notable about this NBA Finals has been the lack of any meaningful growth from game to game. Most championship series start out at a certain level for the first four games before picking up in Game 5. Last year’s NBA Finals grew 27 percent from Game 4 (9.62M) to Game 5 (12.22M). Two years ago, it was a 26 percent jump (from 10.41 to 13.08M). Three years ago, a more modest eight percent bump (from 12.06 to 13.03M).

This year? Try one percent, from 9.41 to 9.54 million.

The growth in viewership from Game 1 to Game 5 has been seven percent, the lowest since — of all years — 2016. That, of course, was the last NBA Finals to go the full seven games until this year.

Seventh Heaven

Where can you go when the world don’t treat you right? The answer is Game 7.

There are plenty of examples in recent history of a Game 7 salvaging an otherwise low-rated series. Just look at last year’s Stanley Cup Final, which went from averaging 3.6 million through six games to 7.7 million in the seventh. Or the World Series, which in both 2014 and 2019 avoided record lows because of a seventh game. In the NBA, one could go back to Spurs-Pistons in 2005, a series that was barely outpacing Spurs-Nets two years earlier until it went the distance — or Rockets-Knicks in 1994, which was overshadowed by O.J. Simpson and the impetus for a Sports Illustrated cover pronouncing the NBA “not” hot.

In none of these cases did Game 7 transform the series into a ratings hit, but it provided a positive note on which to end the season — and made the overall average look a bit more respectable.

But it should be noted that those game sevens took place in a different era of television. Can one be certain that a Game 7 will attract the kind of casual audience that has thus far spurned this series? Certainly, last year’s Stanley Cup Game 7 seems to point in that direction, growing its audience by more than 80 percent over Game 6. Assuming viewership for this year’s NBA Game 6 finished around the same level as Game 5 (those figures will not be out until Monday), an 80 percent increase would mean an audience of about 17.5 million, which to be frank seems a touch out of reach for this series — and the NBA generally in 2025.

Since 2019 — and really more accurately since March 11, 2020 — the NBA has been unable to hit the heights that had been commonplace throughout the 2010s. In an era of seven different NBA champions in as many years, there was never any chance that the NBA would be able to sustain the audience it attracted during LeBron James’ run of eight-straight NBA Finals (half of which were against Stephen Curry). Nevertheless, even a pessimist in 2019 would not have predicted that the league would go through the first half of the decade without a single game getting to the 14 million mark. (Warriors-Celtics Game 6 in 2022 came to within a hair with 13.99 million.)

Even before getting its golden Yankees-Dodgers World Series last year, Major League Baseball had gotten to the 14 million mark once with Game 6 of Braves-Astros in 2021 — a matchup that sounds like an NLDS rather than a World Series. Four of the five least-watched NCAA men’s basketball national title games have occurred this decade, but they all topped 14 million. The Kentucky Derby gets to that level with relative ease, and while it has the advantage of a shorter runtime than an NBA game, few would argue that horse racing is in the same neighborhood as the NBA in terms of popularity.

To be clear, 14 million is not some kind of milestone figure. There is no real ring to it. That it would mark a meaningful superlative for the league — its largest audience in six years — is more an indication of just how difficult it has been for it to hit the high notes in this decade.

There are some milestones that could be in reach. 18.2 million would be the largest men’s basketball audience of this decade. 18.4 million would be the largest pro sports audience, outside of the NFL, in this decade. Nineteen million would be the largest sports audience period — outside of the NFL and Olympics — in this decade. (Go back in time and tell someone in 2019 that a women’s basketball game — Caitlin Clark’s final collegiate contest — holds the top spot.)

It would take an unusually large lift for Game 7 to reach those levels. While Spurs-Pistons in 2005 got to 19 million for its Game 7, no game of that series averaged under ten million — a figure that this year’s series has yet to reach (pending results for Game 6).

If Game 7 is unlikely to give the NBA a leg up on the competition, is a six-year high really all the league can hope for? Not necessarily. Game 7, regardless of the viewership figure, will likely guarantee that this year’s playoff audience surpasses last year, a result that reinforces the importance of series length. Considering the viewership for the series to this point, that is more than a small victory.

Ultimately, there is little Game 7 is going to change about the perception of this series, and of the NBA, as a ratings draw. Even a larger-than-expected Game 7 audience is going to pale in comparison to the halcyon days of LeBron vs. Steph in 2016 (31M), or even to the most recent World Series Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros in 2019 (23M). Simply put, no amount of out-of-home viewing can change the trajectory of linear television viewership, and the young-skewing NBA is perhaps particularly exposed to that erosion.

If one is to believe that the long-term ratings trend matters — and the NBA has 77 billion reasons to cast a skeptical eye toward that argument — this year’s NBA Finals will ultimately be a negative data point. There is no era of the NBA where a Finals matchup of Indiana and Oklahoma City was going to be a ratings hit, but one would have thought going into this series that a well-played, unpredictable matchup could at least get to the ten million mark once in five games.

The counterargument is that the ratings matter less than ever given the state of television, that the league is set for the next 11 years with an unprecedented financial windfall, and that making sure small market teams can compete for a championship is more important than the Finals averaging 20 million viewers again — a viewership figure that, it should be noted, provides no tangible financial benefit for the league or its players.

All true, but it is perhaps meaningful that high-quality basketball involving Oklahoma City and Indiana is trailing a dreadful slog like last year’s Boston-Dallas by double-digits and needs a Game 7 just to get in range of Milwaukee-Phoenix — in July — four years ago. That may not say anything about the financial health of the NBA; it may not be a threat to the league’s business or impact the on-court product; it may not even be the most accurate gauge of popularity in 2025. But it is not insignificant. And it cannot be totally hand-waved away by noting the accelerating decline of television viewership (down 13 percent during the Finals, compared to 6-8 percent a year ago).

As for Game 7, expect the largest NBA audience since 2019. That is not an entirely confident prediction, because the lack of lift throughout this series cannot be completely discounted. An audience in the 13 million range would not be a shock — especially if world events lure viewers to cable news channels — but the expectation here is something in the 14-15 million range.

For each of the other NBA Finals game sevens in the Nielsen people-meter era, viewership rose substantially over Game 6 — 50 percent in 2016 (from 20.7 to 31.0 million), a modest 28 percent in 2013 (from 20.6 to 26.3 million), 57 percent in 2010 (from 18.0 to 28.2 million), 41 percent in 2005 (from 13.5 to 19.0 million) and 53 percent in 1994 (from 17.0 to 26.1 million).

Assuming a Game 6 audience in line with Game 5 (9.5M) and a 50 percent increase, that would put Game 7 just over 14 million.

NBA Finals Game 7: Indiana Pacers at Oklahoma City Thunder (8p Sun ABC, ESPN+): Prediction: 14.97M.