West Valley City • On Sunday afternoon, Guy Morgan took his seat in section 226 at the Maverik Center one last time.

For nearly 30 years, he’d been coming here to cheer on his favorite team — the Utah Grizzlies. Now, he was here to say goodbye.

Over the years, Morgan has not only become a diehard Grizzlies fan but has made the team a crucial part of his life and identity. Grizzlies memorabilia decorates his Syracuse home. Pucks and signed sticks and banners galore.

The season’s schedule sticks to the refrigerator door. Even his email address pays tribute to his favorite team.

“I’m probably like every other fan, but I believe mine are the best seats in the entire house,” Morgan said.

And as it was for every other fan, Sunday’s game — the last game the Grizzlies would ever play in Utah — was an emotional farewell.

What will be lost

The Grizzlies came to Utah in 1995. Earlier this year, the minor league hockey team that plays in the ECHL was sold.

Next season, the team will move to Trenton, New Jersey — but not before leaving a sea of broken-hearted fans and employees who consider themselves a family behind in Utah.

One of those employees is Rob Church, the team’s photographer, who has been capturing Grizz moments for the past nine years. Church originally worked in the Maverik Center’s merchandising department when it first opened.

“I saw the start of it and it kind of seems fitting to see the end of it,” Church said.

Church shoots around 3,000 photos per game with 36 home games a year. At 108,000 photos a season, for nine seasons, that puts him just over 970,000 photos throughout his tenure as the team’s photographer.

He’s captured moments of defeat: a puck sailing past a goalie. Of celebration: blood trickling down a player’s face after winning a scrap. And of stillness: a spotlight on an empty net on the Maverik Center ice.

“Then I get to shoot. I get to watch hockey. I get to capture moments that go by in the blink of an eye,” Church said. “And some days, it’s kind of magical.”

Aside from losing his job, Church said the team’s leaving will have other impacts.

“We’re losing hockey history. The Olympics were played at the Maverik Center,” he said. “We’re losing affordability and entertainment.”

On some nights, a family of four could get tickets for $12 per person. Those prices lured thousands of fans through the doors over the years.

The roughly 10,000-seat venue averaged 4,496 fans this season, and 6,376 for Saturday games, the Grizzlies said. At Sunday’s game, 7,134 came to say goodbye.

Fans like Jennifer Brandenburg and her sister Beth Barney will feel the loss of the team long after the final horn sounds.

“After every single home game, we wait for the boys to come out of the locker room and the building,” Brandenburg said. “Rain, shine, snow, wind, whatever, we’re always there.”

The sisters even give each of the players a gift on their birthdays and stay in touch with past Grizzlies players.

“When they come out, and they’re feeling so defeated, we still give them a pep talk, and they know that we’re going to be there. The boys make the game for us,” Brandenburg said.

Discovering the Grizzlies’ magic was something that happened almost by accident for Brandenburg, who bought tickets to ask a guy out on a date. He said no, so she took one of her best friends instead.

“After that, I was sold. I wanted to go to every game,” Brandenburg said, “[It] just takes one game is all.”

Brandenburg said people in her life keep asking her if she’ll get her hockey fix at Utah Mammoth games instead — but she said it’s out of her price range and there’s something irreplaceable about Grizzlies hockey.

“It’s not the same. We get to know these boys and that’s not something that would happen really as much in the NHL,” she said. “We’re sad to see them go.”

The lasting impact

Grizzlies players Reed Lebster and Luke Manning will miss the Utah fans’ energy the most.

“There’s nothing better than Saturday night, where the fans are rocking the house,” Manning said. “It is a great culture and tradition going on here in Utah.”

The players see that in the stands, and after the games, when fans stick around to greet the players, Lebster added.

On Sunday, fans carried signs, many thanking the team. One showed how a young fan had grown up with the team. Fans cheered from the starting lineup through the final second. People even threw a few dead fish on the ice to “feed” the team’s bear mascot.

Some fans traveled hours across the state to make it to Grizzlies games, like sisters Hayley and Megan Larson, who come from St. George.

At the end of the 2021-22 season, the sisters were visiting Salt Lake and had time to kill. They got tickets to a Grizzlies playoff game and loved the experience so much that they ended up staying for another two games.

“It was very upsetting to go into summer after we just got hooked,” Hayley said. They got season tickets for the next season and have tried to make at least two trips a month to West Valley.

Like Brandenburg, the Larson sisters think Mammoth games won’t have the same feel as Grizzlies games, where they are able to afford to sit in front of the glass, leave their handprints on it.

With the team leaving, voices won’t just die down in the stands. For nearly a decade, up in media row, broadcast announcer Tyson Whiting’s voice has become a staple.

He’s been privy to every single play and knows statistics like the back of his hand, and relays that information to fans in a crisp voice that ebbs and flows with the action on the ice.

He still remembers the first time he sat down to broadcast a Grizzlies game. He was nervous and didn’t want to stumble on his words.

“I tried to paint a picture to our listening audience [so they] could figure out what was going on,” Whiting said.

Whiting grew up on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley, in Kearns, which he said made his job in West Valley even more special.

As the Grizzlies’ time in Utah comes to an end, he will hold onto the memories he’s experienced in tandem with the team.

Like in May 2022, when the Grizzlies played against Rapid City in the second round of the Kelly Cup playoffs.

“Nick Henry scored the game-tying goal with like 43 seconds left, and then Charle-Edouard D’Astous scored the game-winner with about seven seconds left, and the Grizzlies ended up winning five to four,” Whiting recalls.

It’s the best memory he has of his time with the team. “I remember [it] like it happened yesterday,” he said.

Long before the Utah Mammoth came to town, the Grizzlies were Utah’s main source of hockey. That’s something that won’t fade quickly, Whiting said.

“You hear stories about married couples [who] went on their first date to a Grizzlies game,” Whiting said. “Those are some of the things that are going to carry on even beyond the existence of the Grizzlies.”

The Grizzlies’ final moments were filled with emotion. Down one goal with just over a minute and 20 seconds left in the third period, Evan Friesen tied the game — hope was in sight.

But as quickly as it was dangled in front of fans, it was snatched away. The Grizzlies lost in fast overtime. Some fans in the crowd burst into tears, their eyes glued to the ice in disbelief as Rapid City celebrated.

Many, like Morgan, emptied their seats and made the trek back to their cars. Others stood in the stands long after the players went to the locker room. Frozen and grateful all at once.

As fans so proudly proclaim during the national anthem — win or lose — for one last time, the Maverik Center, with its scuffed-up glass and rickety seats, was the “Home of the Grizzlies.”