Here’s What You Need To Know About The Las Vegas NHL Team

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It’s been a long time coming but the NHL just approved Las Vegas to become a future home of an expansion team. The Las Vegas NHL team will be the 31st team in the league when they begin playing in the 2017-2018 season. Ownership of the Las Vegas team will pay a whopping $500 million to the league. The NHL is expanding for the first time since 2000 when Minnesota and Columbus each paid only $80 million to join the league.

The NHL becomes the first of the four major North American professional sports leagues to put a team in Las Vegas. The city, players and league are exploding with excitement despite Las Vegas being one of the smaller markets in the NHL.

While the local market is excited to become a major league city, the tourists are equally fired up. Even though the team doesn’t have a name or players there are people in New York, Chicago and other large cities are getting ready to plan vacations around their team’s first visit to Las Vegas.

Las Vegas NHL Team Name

The next step in the future of the NHL franchise that many will see is the name. The team won’t be named until September. Initial rumors pointed to the team will be called the Black Knights. Owner Bill Foley graduated from West Point. He’s partial to their Black Knights team name. He likes the name so much that has another company named Black Knight Financial Services.

Black Knights doesn’t seem as though it will be the name. Some NHL owners seem to think that the name is too similar to the Chicago Blackhawks. There is also a contingent of people that either finds the name silly or potentially offensive. After listening to this interview, I suspect the name will be just Knights. Local media is currently polling residents to see what they’d like the team to be named. All indications are that the team name won’t represent the gambling part of Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas hockey team will play their home games at the T-Mobile Arena, which is across the street from Excalibur. The arena is 50% owned by MGM Resorts. Imagine the fun tie in’s with the Tournament Of Kings show at Excalibur and NHL team if the name is the Knights.

Becoming A Team

The Las Vegas NHL team will start building its front office and staff this year. Players won’t be available to the team until next year. The bulk of the team will come from an expansion draft of players from the 30 existing teams. They must submit their expansion draft selections to the NHL on June 20, 2017. The announcement of the selections will be on June 21, 2017.

Following the expansion draft will be the NHL entry draft. The team will be given the same odds in the 2017 NHL Draft Lottery as the team finishing with the third-fewest points during the 2016-17 regular season. The first player drafted will be no lower than the 6th pick of the draft.

MGM Resorts Connection

T-Mobile Arena is located near 4 MGM Resorts properties. It’s behind New York-New York, next to Monte Carlo and across the street from Excalibur and MGM Grand. It’s interesting to note that Monte Carlo will become Park MGM sometime near the 2nd season for the NHL franchise. It seems like a nice coincidence that the hotel rebrand will be complete around the name time that the second, potentially less exciting than the first, season gets underway.

Gambling

The NHL will gladly take half a billion dollars to place a team in an arena partially owned by a casino operator. However, they would like to steer clear of being associated with legal and regulated gambling. Gambling is a major part of the culture in Las Vegas and it’s difficult to avoid. You could wager on the Las Vegas NHL team minutes after the team was announced.

The Westgate Superbook has odds on the Las Vegas NHL team to win the Stanley Cup in the 2017-2018 season. Station Casinos has odds for their first game and how many points the Las Vegas NHL team will have in its first season.

When you go to a game you can place wagers at the nearby casinos. You can also open a mobile wagering account. This allows you to wager from your phone.