Agree overall with your whole post and indeed your whole thread. Ref just the snippets above …
Wiki Bill Foley (businessman) - Wikipedia says that Foley graduated from West Point. From which I conclude:
A) He won’t tell West Point anything that’s not nice.
B) He’s got a raging hard-on to own a team with a West Point-like name and logo. Those ain’t changing until/unless SCOTUS tells him to change or lose his investment. Which ain’t gonna happen.
Oh, I know that Foley’s reverence for West Point is prolly the largest reason behind his inability to challenge them about the name, but the larger point is that it’s just so fucking stupid. It seems to be a classic case of punching down rather than punching across. In other words, his lawyers (and the NHL) think that little St. Rose College (and Clarkson College) can’t afford to put up a fight, so they decided to go ahead and pick on the little guy.
That’s a pretty reprehensible attitude, IMO, and goes against Foley’s stated reasons for choosing the team name in the first place (bolding mine):[
](Introducing the Vegas Golden Knights | Vegas Golden Knights)
What a bunch of bullshit.
Maybe the powers that be didn’t want “Las Vegas Knights” because it reminded them of the dreadful baseball team in “The Natural”.
Somewhere down the line “Las Vegas Knights” (has a ring to it, sorta) may well supplant the current name, just as “Tampa Bay Rays” replaced “Tampa Bay Devil Rays”.
As for the team being horrible because it only contains castoffs, there is some angst locally (Columbus area) because the Blue Jackets can only protect a limited number of players (like every other NHL team) and could wind up losing someone pretty good, like a decent forward or promising young backup goaltender. String enough of those players together, spice things up with a succession of high draft picks and the team won’t utterly stink for too long.
There’s been some interesting parachuting displays there in the past, at least. 
BTW—the new team’s name is supposed to work as a pun, right? i.e. “Vegas Nights,” or whatever variants you can build out of that? Or is it just me?
(Well, if I’d named it, I probably would have called them something stupid like the “Pharaohs.”)
They won the pennant. 
I don’t really see why Vegas would have to skate a crap team for long, but the record of modern expansion teams is surprisingly bad. It took the Predators six years to make the playoffs, the Blue Jackets NINE years, the Senators five or six… most expansions teams seem to stay bad for quite awhile.
I admit that I just looked that up now and found it really surprising, because there’s no excuse for it. In today’s sports a full rebuild should not take more than 4 years or so, and NHL expansion teams are reasonably well stocked with OK players to start. Certainly it should not take NINE YEARS to make the playoffs like Columbus. That is inexcusable.
The franchise does’t have to fall apart because of bad product - they might or they might not, we’ve no idea how well they will handle that side of the business. They will fail because it’s just a terrible place for a professional hockey team.
You’re wrong about this, IMO. This town has more hockey fans than you know. I go to UNLV’s games sometimes and there are a couple of hundred people that pay $10 a head regularly to watch them play at local ice rinks. Some games are so crowded that people are standing 3 deep against the glass.
The Las Vegas Wranglers folded because they were unable to find a venue, not because they had no fans; attendance at their games for 11 years averaged 4740 people. Cite.
Las Vegas is not a terrible place for a professional hockey team, IMO, and the facts show there is support for one here.
The problem is that their name and image are so crappy, no one in the valley who isn’t already interested in hockey is likely to ever develop an interest unless the team is just crushing the competition (which is highly unlikely for the (crucial) first 2-3 years of their existence).
Okay, just cuz nobody else has bothered, Vegas Golden Knights sounds like a porn movie that I don’t even want to watch.
Not for one instant do I believe that the team’s name and logo make more than 100 fans a night of difference. It is obviously the case that there is essentially no connection between the coolness of a team’s name and logo and its commercial success.
:rolleyes:
That’s obviously your opinion, and it’s obviously wrong.
Sports history is littered with teams that failed because of bad names and/or logos. That’s why the Rochester Rapists, the Chattanooga Child Molesters and the Manitoba Dumbfucks aren’t around. It’s why no one went to see Ireland’s Dingle Berries soccer team. Obviously the team name and logo matter.
If sports history is littered with teams that failed because of bad names and logos, can you please name ten? Thanks in advance.
That teams you “named” did not exist. Of course if you name your team the Rochester Rapists they’ll fail. But that is not something that happens in the real world. In the real world, the “Bad” names and logos are not 1/1000th as bas as “Child Molesters” (I understand Penn State owns that trademark, anyway.)
In the real world, you have nicknames that are cool and ones that aren’t quite as cool, and some that are kind of silly but aren’t as ridiculous as your imaginary examples. “Vegas Golden Knights” is not at all analogous to “Rochester Rapists.” It’s much more analogous to Utah Jazz, which is transparently silly, or Los Angeles Lakers (or Dodgers) which makes no sense, or Toronto Raptors, which is lame-ass, or Cleveland Indians, which is mildly offensive, or Washington Nationals, which barely constitutes a name at all. And yet those teams have all thrived. If anything, their fans are proud of their weird names and offensive logos. Meanwhile, the Jacksonville Jaguars, Arizona Coyotes and Tampa Bay Rays, who all have pretty cool names and decent logos, ain’t doin’ so good.
If the Golden Knights put a good team on the ice and win a Stanley Cup, then at least briefly people will happily show up wearing knight outfits and waving foam swords.
The Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians have a name and logo, respectively, that are considered offensive by many. Both teams are thriving regardless.
Maybe it’s different with a long-established team and a new team but it seems like a team’s success isn’t affected much by its name and/or logo.
It might hurt merchandise sales though.
This is total bullshit.
All but one of those teams (the Raptors) had a history with the name from previous moves or other factors. The Nationals is a throwback to almost the very beginning of baseball (we’re talkin’ 1890’s here, then for most of the first half of the 20th century). They had reasons for keeping their names. They weren’t just cherrypicked out of the blue. It maintained a certain continuity, even if Brooklynites would happily have shot Walter O’Malley given the chance.
Also, truncating Las Vegas is just plain stupid. If fans (assuming there are any) want to call them the Vegas blahblahblahs, whatever, but it’s disrespectful to the community for the team to do it. Personally, my recommendation would be the Las Vegas ________s, where the ________ is a one-syllable word, whatever it turned out to be. Knights, Stars, Swords, whatever.
I kinda like Stars or Swords, btw, but there might be conflicts. Then again, the North Stars no longer exist, so Stars could work out really nicely…
Anyone for the Las Vegas Spread?
I guarantee you it’s not a duplicate. 
Hmm…now that one I could see being the Vegas Spread.
The NHL early on declared any gambling reference to be verboten. This apparently extended to things with multiple meanings, so Las Vegas Aces was out, even tho it could have referenced the pilots at Nellis Air Force Base.
I still think they should have just gone with Las Vegas Nights and used a knight for the mascot.
Well, the Dallas Stars (descendants of the No Stars) might object…
From the 80s to 2000 the MLB minor league affiliate in Las Vegas was the Las Vegas Stars. In my years living there we went about once a week in season. They drew a pretty good crowd, usually a couple thousand.
They’re now the Las Vegas 51s with one of more unusual logos in pro sports: Las Vegas Aviators - Wikipedia
Overall “Las Vegas Stars” is a pretty good name. It worked well then and that team is fondly recalled by the few folks who’ve lived in Las Vegas long enough to remember.
Could they make more money than usual with corporate suites? Is it common enough for businesses to have trips to Las Vegas? Do Las Vegas businesses tend to organize a lot of outings?
Aside from gambling, what are the main reasons people go to Las Vegas? Is gambling actually the no1 reason or has some add on ended up outgrowing it?
Don’t you mean “near Las Vegas”? : )
Las Vegas is one of the top convention & trade show/exhibit destinations in the world. Of the approximately 42,000,000 people who visited Las Vegas in 2015, about 6,000,000 were here attending a convention/trade show, according to the LVCVA. Cite.
Just goes to show how much of a hockey fan I’m not…although I do vaguely remember the Dallas Stars. Ah well, it’s not as easy as I thought… 