Welcome Matt: NHL and its dumb-dumb GMs gifted Vegas a contender and now they have a Stanley Cup
Congratulations to the Vegas Golden Knights and to Gary Bettman for finally marrying the league’s business ethos with its on-ice competition.
The NHL and its commissioner are amongst the most transactional entities you’ll come across.
‘Who can we lean on?’ ‘Who owes us a favour?’ ‘Where can we place so and so?’ ‘Whose dad can we get to run officiating and supplemental discipline?’
That’s now bled on to the ice.
Bill Foley cut a US$500 million cheque to the board of governors and Gary and the Greedy 30 set him up with an expansion draft so favourable, that the Knights experienced almost no adversity en route to last night’s Stanley Cup triumph.
Foley said he wanted a championship within six years and he got one. Right on schedule.
The league and dumb-dumb GMs gifted Las Vegas an instant contender, a team that has made the conference finals in four of six season, twice to the Cup final and now a title.
Fans celebrated last night (and into the morning), and let’s hope they don’t move on from hockey as another Vegas fad that’s had its day.
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Because the NFL is there now, the Oakland A’s are coming, and so is an NBA expansion franchise.
Saw a lot of people trying to dunk last night about Vegas not being a hockey town, but the test isn’t can you pack a building and public space for a Cup-clinching game.
The test is can you get 17,000 people into the building when you’ve missed the playoffs eight out of nine seasons?
That what a great hockey market like Vancouver does, even with misgivings about the owner and his management team. So how will these #VegasBorn fans behave when it’s their turn to run the draft lottery simulator?
Because the Stanley Cup would be treasured in markets that Bettman and owners stepped on to make Vegas so successful, so soon.
Let’s hope it’s not just another glitter ball on the Strip.