Las Vegas NHL owner leaked fake nicknames, including Sand Knights
Hey, remember the Las Vegas Sand Knights? The proposed nickname for the NHL expansion team that sounded vaguely like a Medieval slur and launched a thousand Desert Action Batman GIFs in response?
Yeah, turns out it was total crap.
As Las Vegas owner Bill Foley told NHL.com’s Nick Cotsonika, he registered and trademarked a series of fake names as a “misdirection ploy” from the preferred name the NHL had cleared and “a secondary name based upon the other ones.”
Sand Knights was one of misdirections he admitted to leaking; no word on Golden, Silver, Desert, Red, Night or any assortment of Knights or Hawks that were registered in some fashion.
From NHL.com:
He has received all sorts of suggestions from all sorts of people, from Aces to Blackjacks to Crappers to Scorpions to Snapping Turtles. Some have been discarded immediately because of their ties to gambling. Some have been discarded immediately because, well, they just don’t work. “You would like your team to be named that?” Foley said.
Some have received serious consideration, like Aces, which could have tied into a local Air Force base, and Scorpions. “Aces is pretty good,” Foley said. “We could produce some pretty interesting logos. I was kind of focused on a little different direction than Aces. A lot of people like Scorpions, but the scorpion is a defensive animal. We’re not going to be defensive. So I didn’t want that.”
Foley also said that reports the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League nixed “Knights” were erroneous, as he always wanted a “two-word” name for the Vegas team.
The target for the name, colors and logo design is mid-October.
—
Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
