Knights play it right in shattered Vegas
At some point, the Las Vegas Golden Knights are going to screw up. Every professional sports team does. Many prominent athletes do.
It’s inevitable. Goodness, even Sidney Crosby can err badly. Calling his team’s upcoming White House visit “not about politics” on Monday, the day after U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence’s clumsy NFL stunt demonstrated that sports are being tethered to politics more than ever before, Crosby has inadvertently aligned himself with rich, sheltered, white male privilege. Really unfortunate.
Vegas, meanwhile, as the NHL’s first expansion club in 17 years, has managed to do nothing wrong yet. Not a single misstep. Nary a tone-deaf message. Call it blind luck. Call it operating in the flexibility of a non-traditional market.
To this point, after more than two years of being in the NHL conversation and 16 months since being officially awarded a franchise, Las Vegas may have done the best job of any expansion team in league history with its first steps.
Indeed, heading into the Golden Knights’ first-ever home opener Tuesday night against the Arizona Coyotes, the organization has even done about as good a job as possible of dealing with an unspeakable tragedy, the mass shooting that left 58 dead and hundreds wounded last week and took place not far from the Knights’ home, T-Mobile Arena.
Understand that the tragedy is anything but over for people in Vegas. Hundreds are still in hospital, and the area where a country music concert turned into a killing ground is very much a crime scene. The question of “why?” still hangs over the city and the country.
For an expansion team that must focus on cheerfully turning people on to NHL hockey as entertainment and making themselves a significant part of the local sports landscape as soon as possible — which means before the NFL Raiders arrive — it’s about the most difficult situation imaginable from a sports business perspective.
Yet still the Golden Knights are getting it right.
“This terrible event has kind of put a damper on opening night,” said owner Bill Foley. “We’re going to be very respectful and pay tribute to the first responders and victims. That’s kind of our job. We’re the Las Vegas team and this is going to be the first event following the massacre.
“We can do all the celebratory activity in our second game on Friday. We just deferred all of that and thought we should just focus on helping the victims any way we can.”
Having Foley, a local resident, at the helm is probably the most important element in all of this. It was his vision that Vegas was a community that would embrace pro sports after years of being shunned by the four major leagues, and that Vegas was more than just The Strip and gambling, but a place where people worked and lived and wanted a local team for which to cheer. He managed to be enthusiastic, but also abide by the niceties and corporate etiquette that some before him had not.
Like most sports, in the NHL if you don’t have focused, deep-pocketed ownership, you don’t have much of a chance. Since the league first started expanding from the Original Six back in 1967, this has frequently been the major reason why teams have, or haven’t, had success.
And let’s be honest. The NHL’s expansion record to now hasn’t been particularly great.
Of the 25 cities awarded a franchise since ’67, only Philadelphia has been a roaring success from the beginning. Vancouver and Edmon- ton have been good, but both were in serious trouble financially at one point because of the low Canadian dollar. San Jose has been rock solid since the beginning, although a small-market team.
Nashville, Pittsburgh and St. Louis have all thrived at different times, but all three faced bankruptcy and the prospect of being relocated more than once. Washington, awarded a team 43 years ago, set records for futility and really only got its act together in the past 20 years. Los Angeles was a big money loser until this century.
Then there are the really sad stories. Oakland was a disaster from the get-go, then moved to Cleveland and only lasted two years there. Atlanta was a failure not just once but twice. Kansas City joined in ’74 and only lasted two seasons. Minnesota was hockey country, but the North Stars couldn’t survive. Both Tampa and Ottawa joined the league without a bona-fide arena to play in. Florida was promising until it left Miami and headed north.
We’re going to see over time whether Vegas can be successful and/or profitable. A $500-million U.S. expansion fee is a massive initial investment, that’s for sure.
But if the team does fail, it won’t be because things weren’t done right at the start, and we’re not just talking about the 2-0 record the Golden Knights will carry into their home opener.
Foley hired an excellent and experienced general manager in George McPhee, who in turn hired a strong coach in Gerard Gallant. The team has been inventive with social media, and hired a veteran Winnipeg media personality to inject life and hockey knowledge into its website. The arena is gorgeous.
The expansion draft brought in goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and James Neal, colourful personalities who have worked beautifully as the first significant player faces the team has offered to the public.
Vegas has raised the bar for the city that inevitably becomes the NHL’s 32nd franchise, likely Seattle. Former MLSE executive Tim Leiweke is spearheading that city’s renovation of Key Arena in order to house a team, and it appears very likely the NHL will get to the Pacific Northwest before the NBA ever decides to give it another try in that city.
Whether it’s Seattle or another city, Vegas is the new template. No, we’re not looking at a 2018 playoff team here, and by February the Golden Knights should be exactly where they need to be, which is fighting for last place overall. Cody Glass, sixth overall, was the team’s first pick in the 2017 draft, but McPhee knows that he’s got to be in the top two or three picks several times in the next five years to build the foundation of a true contender.
Eventually, the honeymoon will end in Vegas. But right now, at arguably the most difficult time in the history of that unique city, the Golden Knights have done well to already be a positive presence, no easy thing to pull off.
Eventually, Vegas will get something wrong. But there’s no sign of that happening any time soon. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering sports for the Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.