Another small town mourns the loss of its junior hockey team.

The mayor blames the owner. The owner blames the city. Everyone knew the arena was a problem. Regardless, the city of Belleville has lost its junior team

At 9:22 p.m. on Thursday, the final official activity in the history of the Belleville Bulls was recorded. The junior hockey franchise that helped train P.K. Subban, that once provided three players to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the same National Hockey League draft, had logged its final shift, and lost its final game.

All that remained was the mourning.

Eight minutes after the final buzzer sounded on a 4-2 loss to the Barrie Colts, sending the Bulls from the first round of the Ontario Hockey League playoffs in a sweep, one veteran player skated alone to centre ice. Adam Bignell, a 21-year-old defenceman and the son of a former Belleville captain, laid his jersey on the faceoff dot and skated away.

It remained there, lying in state, as fans cheered, clanged cowbells, and cried.

“It’s a loss,” said Kim Grimes, wiping away tears. “It’s like losing a person, in a way.”

Identifying the cause of death seems to depend on the person speaking. The arena was an outdated relic. The team had been mediocre and the attendance was stagnant. The market was small, and the financial requirements in junior hockey were growing. The owner was an outsider. City council debated arena plans for decades without ever getting a shovel in the ground.

The mayor has blamed the owner. The owner has blamed city council. A group of fans is collecting signatures with the hope it will convince local leaders to chase another team. It is not clear whether Belleville could afford to build a new arena, or whether anyone could make financial sense of paying millions to move another OHL team into a small market.

On Thursday night, fans were left with the one undeniable fact: Next year, after 34 years in Belleville, the Bulls will be in Hamilton. And in Yardmen Arena, there will be silence in a building that h ad been, Grimes suggested, “like the community church.”

Grimes is a professor at Loyalist College, in Belleville. She has done work as a marketing consultant with the Bulls, and she is married to long-time assistant coach Jake Grimes.

“You’ ll have people who have been here for the 34 years who have lost their spouse, so this is where they come to hang out,” she said. “This is where they come to meet friends. This is where they come to feel a part of something.”

The Bulls became a part of the OHL in 1981, founded by Dr. Robert Vaughan. They won their only league title in 1999, and have sent a handful of recognizable names along to the NHL draft, including Al Iafrate, Bryan Marchment, Darren McCarty, Daniel Cleary and three members of the Subban family — P.K., Malcolm and Jordan.

The Leafs had three firstround draft picks in 1989. They used all three on players from Belleville. Scott Thornton (third overall), Rob Pearson (12th) and Steve Bancroft (21st) were taken when players such as Bill Guerin (fifth), Bobby Holik (10th), Olaf Kolzig (19th) and Adam Foote (22nd) were available. The draft lives in infamy because of the trio’s less-than-spec- tacular NHL careers.

In 2004, Vaughan sold a 70 per cent stake in the Bulls to a group led by Gord Simmonds, a businessman from Uxbridge, Ont., a small town two hours west of Belleville. Vaughan sold the remaining 30 per cent three years later.

Simmonds is married, with four children. He is running a business his grandfather started, with its core being the wholesale distribution of electronics. His offices are in the Toronto suburb of Pickering, just off the highway that leads to Belleville.

He estimated he attended 75 per cent of his team’s home games over 11 years, and rejects the idea he was still an outsider without a deeper connection to the city.

“To me, it’s a lazy excuse,” Simmonds said.

His group tried to make it work in Belleville for a decade. He asked: “How long do you have to be there before you’re not considered an outside owner?”

The arena was always ownership’s major issue. It was the only OHL building to feature a wider international ice surface. There was no room for traditional seating behind either net, so seats were squeezed into nooks and crannies around the walls.

Concourses were small. The roof was low to the ice, to the point where netting had to be installed over the scoreboard, lest a clearing pass strike one of the video screens. Lineups to get beer could last through an intermission and into the next period.

According the Simmonds, the city would not even install railings down the aisles to help improve accessibility: “We had a lot of older season ticket holders that just had to stop coming because of going up and down the stairs.”

“Quite frankly,” Simmonds said, “I got to the place where I just didn’t think they were going to invest in the facility unless there was local ownership.”

“If he feels that way, I feel very badly that he does,” said Mark Fluhrer, director of recreation, culture and community services for the city.

Belleville, he said, was looking to address the arena issue in 2017.

“We did have it in our corporate plan,” Fluhrer said. “We did have it identified as a priority.”

Mayor Taso Christopher was not available for comment despite multiple requests. After the sale was announced last month, Christopher told The Belleville Intelligencer the sale of the team was an “insult” to citizens, and that Simmonds was “motivated by money.”

He also told the paper he had local investors “ready to go.”

If that were true, it would be news to David Branch, the OHL commissioner. He said he had not heard from the mayor about any local investors. Branch also said the mayor had never reached out to discuss that possibility.

Not that it would have mattered anyway, Branch said, because the league would not have allowed another group to continue operating inside that arena. A team in that situation, he said: “just could not remain viable.”

The sale was announced on March 12. Simmonds sold to Michael Andlauer, who owned the American Hockey League’s Hamilton Bulldogs. Simmonds has retained a minority stake.

“He had been here 11 years and did a lot of things to engage the community,” said long-time Bulls play-by-play voice Jack Miller, who is also a member of city council. “If he was local, the only thing that would have made the difference is I think it would have been harder for someone who has their roots in a community like this to really extract one of the most important aspects of that community.”

On Thursday, a handful of fans were collecting signatures for a petition to show leaders there is a will to get a team back into the city. Jason Easton, a criminal defence attorney in Belleville, said grassroots efforts are underway to draw attention from all three levels of government.

Leaus Walker attended the final game with her 28-yearold son, Kevin, who was last year given an award for his loyalty to the team. Kevin lives in Shannonville, about a half hour east of the arena. He also lives with Down syndrome, and the Bulls have become the centerpiece of his winter schedule.

“Come fall, he’s going to be devastated,” his mother said. “I have no idea what we’re going to do. I offered to take him to see the Kingston Frontenacs, and he said no. He loves the Belleville Bulls.”