It is not common for a 21-year old to put his name in the sports history books. However, Reid Duke did just this on March 6th, 2017. Duke did not break any scoring records or even play a single game in the NHL. Instead, he was the first player ever signed by the Vegas Golden Knights hockey organization. This June, the rest of Reid Duke’s future teammates will be selected in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. This draft will bring together the first thirty-man roster for the Golden Knights, the NHL’s 31st team. The Golden Knights franchise will carry heavy expectations as the first major professional sports team in the city of Las Vegas. For better or worse, the Vegas Golden Knights will change the city of Las Vegas and prove that it can be a hockey city. The National Hockey League was founded 100 years ago, and started with six teams in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York, and Toronto. The first expansion and subsequent expansion draft occurred in 1967 when the league doubled its teams from six to twelve. Since this first expansion, the NHL has held ten other expansion drafts and grown to 30 teams. In expansion drafts, existing NHL teams can protect a specific number of players on their rosters. These protected players are not available to be drafted while all other active players on their roster can be drafted by the expansion teams. In previous NHL expansion drafts, existing teams could protect many of the players on their rosters. This created a very low ceiling for the talent available to the expansion teams. In the 2000 NHL Expansion Draft, the league welcomed the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild. In this expansion draft, existing teams were allowed to protect up to fifteen players. With this ability, it left Columbus and Minnesota unable to draft any of the most skilled players. Concerning the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft, Wayne Gretzky told the NHL Network “instead of putting the worst team you can put together and then saying after two years, you know what, Las Vegas is not a hockey city. And that's not fair to the city, and that's not fair to the National Hockey League.” Gretzky believed that for Las Vegas to have a fair opportunity to succeed, teams had to be able to protect less of their talent. The NHL agreed with this sentiment and wanted to give the Golden Knights the opportunity to select skilled players.
The protection options were lowered for existing teams for the 2017 expansion draft. Existing teams will only be allowed to protect up to eleven players. This will force the thirty teams to give up many essential players from their roster for Vegas to pick from. The Golden Knights will have thirty picks with the specifications that three will be goalies, nine will be defensemen, fourteen will be forwards and the remaining four picks can be from any position. The Vegas organization must make the right draft picks to have a successful future. If the team is not quick to succeed, their failure will be written off to the fact that hockey does not belong in the desert or Las Vegas. However, this has shown not to be true. Just 300 miles south of Las Vegas, the Arizona Coyotes have proven that hockey can not only survive in desert cities, but flourish. In 1996, the Winnipeg Jets moved to Arizona and became the Phoenix Coyotes. Over the past twenty years in Arizona, the Coyotes have found success despite the difficulties of bad ownership. The Coyotes organization overcame bankruptcy declared by their owner with the NHL buying the team out. Under the supervision of the NHL, the Coyotes hired coach Dave Tippett. With his guidance and leadership, Tippett has led the team to success. The Coyotes won their first division championship in the 2011-2012 season. Since winning this title, hockey has flourished in the state of Arizona. The number of amateur hockey players in Arizona has grown by 83%, and the state has become home to an NCAA Division I hockey program at Arizona State University. Arizona, through its chaotic success, has exemplified that the Vegas organization can succeed with good leadership on and off the ice. However, this example of success does not guarantee that Vegas will succeed or even meet expectations. The Coyotes did find success in Arizona, but they were also a preexisting team from another city with its foundation already built. The Golden Knights organization will have added challenges having to build their own foundation. The organization must wade through many unexpected difficulties and challenges which have already begun to occur. On November 23rd, 2016, fans and press gathered outside T-Mobile Arena, the future home of Las Vegas’ hockey team. They stood in excitement for a celebration of the teams founding and the announcement of the official name and logo. Bill Foley, owner of the team, emceed the event. To start the celebration, he played a video on the side of the arena. Due to technical difficulties, the video’s audio cut out almost immediately and the attendees had to sit through the two-minute video in silence. This brought Foley to tell fans “We’re gonna do better than that on the rink, I’ll tell you that.” These technical difficulties continued throughout the remainder of the ceremony. Further glitches forced Foley to ask multiple times for applause from the audience. While these issues surrounded minor details of event planning, this does not bode well for the young organization as it heads into the future. Despite these problems early on, the people of Las Vegas are ready to welcome the Golden Knights. The city of Las Vegas had never previously experienced the pride and joy that comes with having a major professional sports team within its city. In the past, Las Vegas has been home to various minor league teams that had short tenures in the city. Now, the people of Las Vegas are ready for and deserve a major professional hockey team. With the introduction of the Golden Knights, the residents of Las Vegas have greeted this team with open arms as the team received more than 14,000 deposits for season tickets. All eyes of the hockey world will be on the city and this team. Only time will tell if the team will be successful on the ice, but off-ice the team will bring pride to the city. As best stated by Las Vegas Review Journal columnist Ed Graney “this is sports at a level Las Vegas has never known, an entirely different dynamic than ever experienced here. The potential impact of an NHL team, socially and economically, is immeasurable.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Sean KageffSenior at the University of Michigan studying Actuarial Math CategoriesArchives |