The long and painstakingly slow process for the NHL and its Las Vegas team to unveil the nickname at a celebration outside T-Mobile Arena last month, added a new chapter to the saga when its trademark request was denied.
Sports Columns
If there was ever a doubt Las Vegas owned savvy and knowledgeable National Hockey League fans, the thousands who packed Toshiba Plaza outside T-Mobile Arena on Tuesday night put those to rest.
This is the calm before the storm, the appetizer before T-Mobile Arena next season hosts the main course of the town’s first major league professional sports franchise.
Given all the coverage Bill Foley has received on the matter, I was sure the happenings would be included in those intelligence briefings given to Trump and Clinton.
George McPhee is the team’s general manager who is devising a plan on how to build the roster to compete early. But who exactly will be cheering for it?
Las Vegas owner Bill Foley found someone to run his NHL expansion team who is just as intense about winning as he is with the hiring of George McPhee as general manager.
The man who paid an expansion fee of $500 million to deliver Las Vegas its first major league professional sports team isn’t one to sit back and wait for anything.
Bill Foley loves the Army and everything it stands for, loves the values and discipline and traditions. He lives his life within the structure of such uniformity. It’s also how he made sports history in Las Vegas.
On the day history is made for Las Vegas and its NHL team, the key will be how things look at the box office 3 years from now.
This is bigger than UNLV winning its national championship in basketball, and Greg Maddux making the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and every Grand Slam trophy Andre Agassi held aloft.
Gabe Gauthier is part of the overwhelming majority that believes hockey is coming to T-Mobile Arena, and knows better than most where Foley’s franchise should begin its pursuit of a long-term fan base.
For years, for decades, forever, those issues that prevented serious thought about Las Vegas ever featuring a major league professional sports franchise almost immediately ended any such movement.
All signs point to a smooth and clear conclusion to the Las Vegas expansion process for billionaire Bill Foley. He just can’t say it. He can’t offer much of anything definitive. But he can plan and dream.