Why the Vegas Golden Knights Will Fail
Tonight dawns a new era in the National Hockey League. The biggest storyline of the 2017–18 season is about to begin. It isn’t the Penguins quest to be the first team to win three straight cups since the Islanders of the ’80s (great start by the way). It isn’t even Connor McDavid’s attempt to dethrone Sidney Crosby as the world’s best player. No the NHL season’s biggest story is going to start in Phoenix, Arizona of all places. The first NHL expansion team since the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild entered the league in 2000 is starting their regular season against the Arizona Coyotes.
The Vegas Golden Knights first started in 2014 after businessman Bill Foley created an ownership group and began to generate interest in the Las Vegas area for a NHL franchise. The first season ticket drive generated mass interest after starting in February 2015, and reaching the goal of 10,000 season ticket deposits that April. After generating even more interest and more deposits for season tickets, the team started operations during the 2016–17 season, hiring head coach Gerard Gallant, and completing their expansion draft and grabbing big name players such as James Neal, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Vegas resident Deryk Engelland. The team made moves looking to the future such as recently trading away prospective back-up goaltender Calvin Pickard, and acquiring two additional first round draft picks on top of the one they already possessed, selecting prospect Cody Glass from the Portland Winterhawks with the 6th pick of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. Cody Glass was the first draft-pick by the Golden Knights, but not their first prospect. 21 year old forward Reid Duke from the Brandon Wheat Kings was the first player signed by Vegas after outlasting his three year entry period with the Minnesota Wild who took him with the 169th pick in the 2014 draft. These moves have set the Golden Knights up for near mediocrity the next few years which will lead to the acquisition of more top prospects.
While the future plans from an organizational stand point may be average at best, the regional situation for the Golden Knights could be one of the worst in the NHL. The NHL has for years insisted on shoving teams into markets that a reasonable hockey franchise would never even think of entering. With teams such as the Florida Panthers, Carolina Hurricanes and Arizona Coyotes, the Vegas Golden Knights now join this list of NHL franchise punching bags. To put it in perspective, the Winnipeg Jets had one of the most devoted fan bases in the late 1990’s despite the teams lack of success. The Jets’ arena deal ran out and the team relocated to Phoenix for the 1996 season, where they have remained as the Coyotes to this day. The Coyotes have failed to generate any interest in the area since their inception, except for the year they finessed their way to the Western Conference Final in 2012 and lost to the eventual cup champ Los Angeles Kings in five games. The Coyotes have one of the worst fan bases in hockey, while the new Winnipeg Jets fanbase(formerly the Atlanta Thrashers) haven’t missed a beat in the old MTS Centre. You’d think that would generate a following for the Yotes in Phoenix, however we are just five years removed from that series, and the Gila River Arena has never been emptier. The Vegas Golden Knights are headed down this path, and maybe even down a worse one.
There isn’t much that the Coyotes have that the Golden Knights don’t have. But one thing the Coyotes don’t have in their market are large-scale distractions. Every now and then the Phoenix Suns decide to try and pull what little interest the Coyotes have away from them, letting the Yotes sink to a level of garbage every year that no one ever though possible. While the Golden Knights don’t have any teams to compete with, they do have to compete with something bigger than the Phoenix Suns, the Las Vegas Strip. No one on the Las Vegas Strip has any interest of attending a hockey game, especially one played by a mediocre expansion team such as the Golden Knights. You may be saying “They have significant season ticket interest you’ve said it earlier in the piece.” or “They’ve drawn large crowds even for pre-season games and expect even larger ones for the regular season.” The season ticket theory may have some weight, however many of those season tickets were purchased by regional casinos to be another prize in the Las Vegas gambling scene. As for the large crowds the Golden Knights seem to be drawing, that theory is even easier to debunk. The Golden Knights are a fad in Vegas right now, a new toy in the toy-chest. Everyone is turning out to see what is going on in T-Mobile Arena. They are sitting in the stands asking themselves questions like “What is hockey?”, “Why does the one team have more players than the other right now?” and worst of all “Why aren’t they fighting?”. Every gambler and entertainment seekers in Las Vegas is turning out to see what every non-hockey fan hopes when they go to a hockey game which is a full out brawl and maybe some attractive ice girls during TV timeouts. I’m not going to say I don’t absolutely enjoy a brawl when I attend a hockey game, but it’s not my main draw, or the main draw for any person who has at least a minimal interest in hockey. Going to a hockey game and hearing the dude behind you scream “FIGHT HIM!” 500 times during the game is a form of first-world torture. Fighting delegitimizes hockey in the mainstream, and in the boxing and gambling fueled sports market that is Las Vegas, that is the main draw of the Golden Knights. Once these fans realize the fights aren’t a staple of the game, and the team on the ice is one of the worst in the Western Conference, the interset will plummet faster than a bank account that spends all nights at the slots.
I’m not saying the Golden Knights are totally doomed. They can focus on the mistakes made by teams like the Coyotes, and try to correct them. While the experiment of hockey in non-traditional markets has failed in most instances, it has succeeded in areas like Nashville and Tampa Bay. What the Golden Knights hope to be is what the Nashville Predators were during last year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. The country music scene in Nashville totally embraced the Preds, with country stars showing up for every game, including of course the wife of then Predator’s captain Mike Fisher, Carrie Underwood, and others like Keith Urban and Dierks Bentley. Combine that with a series against the defending champions Pittsburgh Penguins, and an arena environment unlike any I’ve ever seen in the NHL, you’ve got a winner. Unfortunately the Predators got there by winning and actually being a good team, which is something the Golden Knights won’t be in a position to do for many years. Maybe in a few years when the team already finds itself in debt, they’ll move the team to a city that actually deserves a franchise, such as Seattle or Quebec City.
