Searching for a little puck love in Sin City
LAS VEGAS— If you’re a hockey fan and you come to Las Vegas — and the Vegas Golden Knights are pretty sure you’re coming — you’re going to want to know how your favourite ice sport is going to fare in the desert.
So, you ask around. And things start out badly when your cab driver says: “Hockey?” and says it like he’s pronouncing it for the first time.
His name is Shaman, and he’s from Iran. And when you add the word “ice” in front of hockey and prompt him with the team name, something tweaks his memory: “I’ve never seen hockey. It’s like basketball, right? Where you have the ball and hit it with the thing?”
You move on. Shaman drops you at your hotel where Lucy checks you in and things take a promising turn when she asks if you’re in Vegas for business or pleasure and you tell her: Yes, for both. For hockey.
“Yeah, we’re getting a team,” she says. “A new team. We haven’t had any team, except for Triple-A Baseball. I’m excited.”
Lucy sends you to Shirley, to set you up for your Player’s Card, where if you bet $10 on a table game the casino will match it. You can’t lose, you think. And Shirley, a lovely grandmotherly type from New Jersey, makes it sound as if hockey saved her grandson from some sort of family shame — a family where everyone took pride in their basketball and football prowess. All but one boy.
“My grandson cannot play football. He has no rhythm. He cannot play basketball. He cannot dribble. But he plays hockey in high school.”
Yes, her grandson was an athlete after all. She was a Flyers fan long ago, and she can skate — but only in the middle with the 2-year-olds.
It’s lunch first, and Shirley also gave you a coupon for $5 off a beer-andburger combo at the sports bar. ESPN is everywhere. They’re debating the best player in WNBA history on the English channel, and talking Mexican soccer on the Spanish feed.
Bruno takes your order, but he doesn’t know hockey. He does know he owns a house near where the new football stadium is being built for the NFL Raiders, and he’s expecting a rise in property value of about 35 per cent in 10 years: “I looked it up.”
He brings over Edgar, the other bartender. He’s from San Diego, but he dated a woman in Calgary so he’s a Flames fan: “The playoffs were great, intense. Way better than basketball.”
Will hockey work? “I know I’ll be a fan, but it’s 50-50. When I went to Wrangler (minor-league) games, there were a lot of people there, but they weren’t there for hockey. They were there to, uh, socialize. But I think it will work. It’s Vegas.”
That’s when Steve Carp calls. He grew up a Rangers and later Islanders fan in Brooklyn. Now he’s the hockey writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He fills in some blanks:
Some 14,000 season seats are sold, bought by regular fans. The casinos bought the suites. The Golden Knights have launched a youth hockey program.
And they have a three-year head start on the NFL for making inroads.
“It’s like anything. You gotta win,” says Carp. “If they don’t win, maybe they’re the Atlanta Thrashers. If they win, maybe they’re the Nashville Predators.”
You’ve still got that $10 voucher in your pocket, so you head to the tables. In the end, you’re up $52.50.
You head to the cashier. Addie, short for Adeline, converts chips to dollars. She says she’s “probably not” going to see the new team. But she has heard of them.
The verdict: You beat the odds in Vegas. So can the Golden Knights.