Las Vegas Knights would have been a perfectly fine name. I don’t mind the logo, and the color combination s at least a different palette for the the NHL rather than the same old color combos.
Not only is there an NHL ready arena for the Vegas Golden Knights, but they have over 13000 season ticket deposits.
The metro area of Las Vegas is I’m guessing off the top of my head double that of Quebec City, who deserves and NHL team too but their window is closing. Despite what bullshit has been fed by one various con artist after another, I don’t think Toronto will embrace a second franchise. Its Maple Leafs all the way.
And exactly what the fuck makes anyone think Seattle will support an NHL franchise? They just lost their NBA championship team.
I too raise an eyebrow at Las Vegas supporting an NHL franchise but at this point the local denizens seem to want to support it why not give it a chance?
I’m going to say that you don’t many people who live here, then. I live in Las Vegas.
It’s not the Big Apple Yankees or the Windy City Cubs or the Beantown Red Sox or the Frisco 49ers or the Hotlanta Braves, etc.
Mangling the city name is disrespectful, IMO.
Fuck the Vegas Golden Knights.
But there are a lot more people who don’t live in Vegas than those who do. And the Yankees aren’t the Big Apple Yankees for the same reason that the Golden Knights aren’t the Las Vegas Golden Knights: Most people don’t refer to New York as The Big Apple, and most people don’t refer to Vegas as Las Vegas (and likewise for Windy City, Beantown, etc.).
Stupid move on the NHL’s part. There are too damn many teams in places that don’t care that much for hockey. This is just one more. Vegas v Las Vegas, I can’t get excited about. The owners once again getting a fix of addicting expansion fees, that’s something else. Too many teams.
That doesn’t actually sound very impressive.
When the Jets moved to Winnipeg, a city maybe a third the size of Las Vegas, they did not sell “Deposits.” They sold actual season tickets. All of them; every seat in the house was actually sold out.
“Deposits” on season tickets - maybe of which, upon investigation, I find, are NOT seasons tickets, but small fractions of the cost of quarter and half season tickets and other such packages - aren’t an impressive display of support at all. SELL 13,000 seasons tickets and I’ll be impressed.
I suspect most of the ticket sales are going to be either big casino owners, or tourists.
Actually, I think “Penguins” is a perfect name for a hockey team – and I’m NOT saying this as a Pens fan. Penguins, after all, are native to Antarctica, so you’ve got the ice reference right there.
(If they were going to use “Golden”, why not go old school and call them the “Golden Seals”?)
So what’s the over/under on the team folding or moving? I got $20 on 3 years.
Which raises a point: With an ordinary, local fanbase, even if everyone who goes to the games buys a shirt or a cap or whatever, that’s still just the same number of shirts as filled seats. With a “fan base” composed of “whoever happens to be vacationing in Vegas on this day”, though, you can sell a new shirt and cap to every tourist who comes through. There’s a lot of money in that merchandise, and a tourist city like Vegas is in a better position than most to move it.
The arena deal would not allow a move THAT quickly.
Plenty of $ in that town, too. 
And a symbiotic relationship between the two.
Since The Coyotes have managed to stay in the Phoenix area for 20 years now despite massive ineptitude, you might want to reconsider the bet.
For all the criticism the NHL expansion has gotten over the last 50 years, most of the teams are still there. Both Atlanta teams were moved to Canada after a decade plus and the Oakland franchise failed (a successful San Jose franchise came along) as well as its quick stay in a Cleveland/Richfield. The Minnesota team moved to Dallas, more about owners greed, but a new one has taken its place. The WHA teams, Hartford, Winnipeg and Québec City came in thru a merger, and two of them suffered from exchange rate problems.
A lot depends on if the Vegas ownership tries to build a grassroots movement to get people interested in hockey. Or if it is content to just count the money. It may hurt if an NFL franchise moves; aren’t there about six NFL teams kicking the tires on that (talk about a wealthy league that moves teams a lot).
It’s certainly not a great mascot, but it’s still better than the Blue Jackets or the Wild. And I do like the logo. I wouldn’t feel dumb skating around the ice with it adorning my jersey. It is, however, going to take a while for me to stop associating the mascot with the University of Central Florida, whose teams used it for a good while.
Heh- now they’re the Fuel. But not the Indianapolis Fuel, they’re the Indy Fuel.
You’re forgetting that the Jets weren’t an expansion team. The team was already a fully up and running organization when they started to sell tickets in Winnipeg, with less than 5 months to go before their first game as the Jets so of course deposits weren’t necessary. The Golden Knights started selling their tickets over a year before Las Vegas was even awarded a team as way to prove a viable fan base, so you get deposits.
And anyway, unless you have evidence that a significant proportion of the 16,000 season tickets they’ve already sold are going to drop out, there isn’t a meaningful distinction between season tickets and season ticket deposits.
I used to live in Las Vegas. As said above, “Vegas” is what tourists call it. Locals almost always include the “Las”.
The huge question is whether they expect the franchise to live off the locals or live off the tourists. They need to decide then market to one or the other. The two groups aren’t antagonistic, but their preferences are very different.
Color me deeply skeptical they’ll succeed at marketing it to tourists. At least not to US or Canadian tourists. Those folks come to Las Vegas for the things they can only get there. NHL hockey’s not one of those things; it’s available in 30 other North American cities. OTOH, if there’s a growing excitement about NHL hockey amongst the Chinese that’s a different story; perhaps it’ll become one of the must-do experiences for them. If so, Ka-CHING!!!
When trying to attract tourists you need to understand that you’re competing for one of the only 2 to 5 nights these folks have in Fabulous Las Vegas. So you’d better offer something pretty compelling vs. the rest of the competition.
The last NHL game I attended (FL Panthers in 2015) set me back $300 for two low corner tickets, parking, 2 hot dogs, 1 popcorn, and 2 beers. I know what kind of evening I can get for $300 in Las Vegas and it beats the pants off the NHL.
Hockey or Cirque de Soliel? Hmm. Hockey or gamble all night? Hockey or a live magic show or has-been crooner or revue or topless revue or … ?? Hmmm indeed.
And the correct decision, as you point out, is “the locals.”
Florida and Tampa Bay both had some dreams of getting big business from tourists, and in the surface of it there was some logic there; Florida is full of Canadians and people from northern states in the winter. But people don’t flee Canada in February to see winter things; they flee Canada in February specifically to NOT see winter things. They go to Florida to enjoy beaches and sunshine and see Disneyland.
If I’m going to Vegas for four nights I can think of thirty things to do before I’d want to see a Golden Knights game.
At this point, it’s really only the Raiders who are looking at Vegas with any seriousness. Mark Davis (the Raiders’ principal owner, and Al’s son) has been aggressively looking at Vegas since he got closed out of Los Angeles by the Rams’ move last year.
The Chargers are (somewhat reluctantly) looking at moving out of San Diego, but I don’t think that their owner is particularly enthused about Vegas, and most of the talk is around whether they’ll decide to cohabitate with the Rams at their new stadium in Los Angeles.
The only other NFL team which currently seems to be at all likely to move in the foreseeable future is the Jaguars. That’s been rumored for a long while, as Jacksonville is a relatively small market (and probably shouldn’t have gotten a franchise in the first place), but Shad Khan has put some money into renovations in Jacksonville, and I’ve not seen any serious discussion of Vegas as a landing place for them (London is what’s been more often rumored).
My understanding had also been that the Lightning and Panthers (and, for that matter, the Coyotes in Phoenix) were hoping to create a fan base from older hockey fans who had moved to Florida and Arizona from the northern U.S. and Canada (or, at least, were snowbirds, living in those warm-weather places during hockey season). But, as it turned out, retirees from Toronto were more likely to remain as Maple Leaf fans, than convert to following the Lightning or Panthers.