Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Say hello to the Vegas Golden Knights

g_roWbaDm6q1
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman unveils the name of the league's Las Vegas expansion team, the Vegas Golden Knights.

Five months after the NHL officially awarded its next expansion team to Las Vegas, the team finally has a name.

Please welcome the Vegas Golden Knights to the NHL.

The official unveiling took place in Las Vegas on Tuesday night in a ceremony that was at times a little awkward thanks to repeated technical difficulties with a video that was supposed to announce the name. But the best moment came when Gary Bettman received his customary chorus of boos as he prepared to make his opening statements, prompting the commissioner to tell the fans to keep booing because it shows Las Vegas is now officially an NHL city.

But the important thing here is the name, as well as the logo which works the letter “V” (for Vegas, obviously) into the knight’s mask.

“We want our team to be known for dedication, honor, strength, courage and a commitment to never give up - both on the ice and off,” team owner William Foley said, via the team’s website. “We want our team to be committed to teamwork, service to this great city and integrity in all things - and we wanted a name and logo that represented all of this and was unique to Las Vegas and our community. Vegas Golden Knights is that name.”

The team’s official colors are listed as “steel grey”, gold, red and black.

What do those colors represent? We let the team explain:

The team’s colors - steel grey, gold, red and black - reflect the community and the focus of the team:

Steel grey represents strength and durability
Nevada is the largest producer of gold in the United States, it is a highly-valued precious metal and is a color seen in the Las Vegas terrain
Red is from the Vegas skyline, the desert and the beauty of the Red Rock canyons; red is also a color associated with the readiness to serve
Black represents power and intensity


The one thing we did know about the team name from almost the very beginning was that “Knights” was going to be a big part of the branding. Foley has had a long-time admiration for that name, in large part because he graduated from the United State military academy at West Point … whose mascot is the Black Knights.

Foley’s group is also called Black Knight Sports & Entertainment.

When the Las Vegas team first started to become a reality there was a belief the team would end up getting that name, but Foley later confirmed that there were some objections from his alma mater.

Simply calling the team the Knights was also out of the question because that name is owned in Canada by the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights.

Foley said back in August that “to acquire the name from London is not economically feasible.”

From there, the options pretty much turned to some other variation of Knights, including the Desert Knights, Silver Knights, and the now official name, the Golden Knights.

The Golden Knights will begin play next season and will mostly be assembled through an expansion draft in June. George McPhee, the former long-time general manager of the Washington Capitals, will be the man in charge of constructing the roster from the ground up.