There is no guarantee that the Chilliwack Bruins will be playing hockey in Prospera Centre next year and the owners of the Western Hockey League franchise are considering multiple offers to buy the club, Bruins president Darryl Porter told the Times.

And while season ticket renewal offers are ready to be mailed out, Porter said, "they're not going to be coming right away because the owners have decided to look into these inquiries."

Yet Porter has denied that there is anything new about the current state of the franchise.

"We've owned this team for five years and I'm not exaggerating if I was to say there's either been expressions of interests or people making offers probably 50 times in those five years, but people didn't find out about it so no one asked. We reviewed every single one of them and obviously we rejected them because we're still here."

Bruins fans have exchanged rumours about the team's future in Chilliwack for several months, with many noting that the Bruins' lease at Prospera Centre expires at the end of the current season. That talk exploded Friday after News 1130 reported that the Bruins were for sale and that Graham Lee--who owns RG Properties, a Vancouver development company--had been spotted at a Bruins game. That same day the Victoria Times-Colonist reported that the City of Victoria will extend RG Properties' lease on that city's 7,400-seat arena if the company attracts a Western Hockey League team.

On Friday, Western Hockey League commissioner Ron Robison told the Times that major junior hockey can still succeed in Chilliwack despite sagging ticket sales since the Abbotsford Heat moved in next door.

Chilliwack's home games have averaged 3,321 fans this year, good for 16th out of 22 teams in the league. That number is down from the club's first two years in the city but up seven per cent from last year.

"The market has been impacted to some extent by the American Hockey League in Abbotsford but having seen it, we still see it as a viable market moving forward," said Robison.

He said "there is tremendous interest in purchasing franchises around the league . . . but right now there's been nothing filed with us to indicate that there's been anything material occurring."

That jibes with what Porter told the Times. He said there has been a rash of proposals to buy the club in recent weeks and that the ownership group will be reviewing each.

Any sale would need to be approved by the league, and Robison said that the league stresses keeping teams in their current markets.

"It's clearly our desire to keep them where they are," he told the Times. "From time to time we have to review relocation but that's been very rare. There hasn't been a relocation in our league for many, many years."

The last relocation took place in 1998 when the Edmonton Ice moved to Cranbrook and became the Kootenay Ice. In 2005, Porter proposed to move the Tri-City Americans to Chilliwack, but that plan was voted down by the league's board of governors. Instead, Chilliwack was granted an expansion franchise and a new ownership group was found to keep the team in the Kennewick, Wash.

"Our desire is to keep our franchises where they are currently operating," Robison told the Times on Friday. While each bid to buy a club is evaluated on its own merit, Robison said the league would prefer bids that would keep a franchise in its present location.

However, on the same day, Robison told the Victoria Times-Colonist that the Western Hockey League would prefer to relocate a team to Victoria, rather than expand.

"We have strong interest in the Victoria market," he said. "We do not foresee, however, expansion. The ideal scenario for us is to relocate a franchise to Victoria."

Porter said it is not unusual for prospective buyers to kick the tires on WHL franchises and said he can't understand the interest in the owners' deliberations.

"We also don't expect that we should be expected as business guys to play that out in the media," he said. "The truth of it lately is there has been multiple expressions of interest and offers made, all in the last number of weeks, and the truth of it is we are going through the process of figuring out and reviewing them all. And there's nothing more to that.

"This has been a particular rush of it and that's why I don't think it's a story. I just think people are preying because they understand that we're not drawing well, our team's not playing good, Abbotsford's there--for whatever reason."

Asked what he would say to worried fans, Porter said: "We're trying to work through these various expressions of interest as fast as we can."

Pressed on whether he could guarantee that the Bruins will be playing in Chilliwack next year, Porter told the Times, "I just don't want to comment on that because I haven't got my head around what these offers mean and who they are.

"It's harsh to say this, I just don't think it's the business of everybody what we do in this stage. If nobody would have found out about it, it would never have been any news. And I think we have a right as owners to review our position when these offers are coming in and I'm going to leave it at that."

Many Bruins fans, however, disagreed with that sentiment.

On an Internet message board popular with Bruins supporters, fans have expressed disbelief and anger that the team might be on the way out of town. Many pointed to a time- and money-consuming emotional investment that may be about to go bust.

Colin MacMillan, the site's developer and a Bruins season ticket holder since day one, said Bruins fans have thrown themselves passionately behind the Bruins.

"We've invested a lot of our own money supporting this team, travelling, buying merchandise, that kind of stuff. We would kind of like to have some honesty and clarity," he told the Times.

Fans began to discuss the potential sale of the Bruins on Thursday, prompting a doubting response from MacMillan.

"You don't speak for all of us," he wrote to another fan worried about the absence of season ticket information. "I'm not concerned in the least. We're barely even two years in to the Habscheid era and the team is slowly but surely making progress."

However, less than 24 hours later, he had made a 180-degree turn, stating his belief that the Bruins may be on their way out of town, despite a feeling that Chilliwack can support a WHL team.

For fans like MacMillan that uncertainty, and worry, has tainted the Bruins longest winning streak of the season.

"The thing that frustrates me the most about the whole thing is we've sat through years of sub-.500 hockey, playoff disappointments and now that we're seeing this team improve, we may not even see them next year. That's the most frustrating part."

- with files from Victoria Times-Colonist