(08-27-2016 08:28 AM)goofus Wrote: I mean I get it. It's a play on words, or maybe its not. Instead of Desert nights, they say Desert Knights instead.
But what do Knights historically have anything to do with the Desert? Wouldn't it make more sense to be Desert Pharaohs or Desert Sultans or something like that?
It has nothing to do with the desert or even the city of Las Vegas. This nickname is all about the owner and his personal preferences.
Bill Foley, the man who (foolishly?) plunked down $500 million for an NHL franchise, and a very proud graduate of West Point, wanted to honor his alma mater by naming his hockey team after it.
However, a few entities, including the United States government, objected to that idea so he instead sought to name the team simply "Knights" to kind of circumvent the whole deal.
The problem with that idea is that there is a very prominent team in the Ontario Hockey League, in the Canadian juniors, called the London Knights. Think of it as an NFL expansion team trying to call itself the Las Vegas Crimson Tide and you see the conflict.
As an aside, a lot of people don't realize/remember this but the Colorado Avalanche ran into the same problem when they relocated from Quebec City back in the mid 90s.
Their original plan was to nickname themselves the Rocky Mountain Black Bears - which would have been awesome! Alas, that's the University of Maine's nickname and they were threatening to sue, so Colorado went in a different direction.
Again though, their second choice was actually the Colorado Extreme – which may have been the worst nickname in professional sports history had it gone through. However, fortunately for all concerned, there was such an intense fan backlash against that nickname that they quickly scratched that plan and settled on Avalanche, which obviously sucks but is not as bad as Extreme.
I think the nickname Wild is the worst nickname in the NHL and arguably all of professional sports. Minnesota has a ton of cool things happening in that state and they went with the most generic name possible.
Extremely disappointing. Still better than Extreme though. They should've worked out a deal with the Dallas franchise to bring back a nickname North Stars – which was at one time arguably the NHL's coolest nickname.
