Knights finally make it to prime time, gain national appeal
Remember before the hockey season started, when it appeared for the longest time that Golden Knights games wouldn’t be available to Cox Cable subscribers?
When cynics said the only people watching the NHL expansion team play on TV would be waiting to pick up a pizza at one of those MacKenzie River joints that team patriarch Bill Foley owns up in Montana?
When not even ESPN 8, “The Ocho,” or ESPN 9, “The Nueve,” seemed interested?
Well, that was 87 games ago.
Game 88 of Miracle on Ice Redux — aka Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals pitting the San Jose Sharks against the Golden Overachievers of Las Vegas — was televised live and in prime time to a national NBC audience on Saturday.
It was first time the team skated in front of a national viewership on NBC “The Uno.”
Alas, the Knights didn’t appear to be ready for prime time during a sloppy double-overtime 4-3 loss at T-Mobile Arena, evening the series at 1-game apiece.
Before the Sharks drew level on the way to San Jose, three questions were raised in the manner of a Evander Kane high stick to Pierre-Edouard Bellemare’s melon during another display of postseason professional ice hockey, this one alternating between rollicking and fitful:
— One, what took NBC so long?
— Two, is it possible the Golden Knights are becoming America’s Hockey Team, Saturday’s Chevy Chase-style pratfall against the visitors from the Bay Area notwithstanding?
— Three, can Andy Van Hellemond or somebody like him please explain goaltender interference before I have another doughnut?
Maple Leafs of the desert
The Maple Leafs of Toronto probably will always be Canada’s Team, though they haven’t hoisted Lord Stanley’s Cup since goalies played without masks. The Leafs are to hockey what the Cubs are to baseball.
Likewise, the Montreal Canadiens will always be popular with French-speaking Les Habitants named Jacques and Gilles, and with other men who wear top hats and overcoats to hockey games.
On the domestic side of the blue line, when the Chicago Blackhawks were lighting the red lamp during their recent heyday, that infernal “Chelsea Dagger” ditty by The Fratellis became seared to our collective cortex like a salmon to a frying pan. The Hawks still are beloved in the Rust Belt and wherever Chicagoans go to escape the winter.
The other Original Six stateside teams — Rangers, Red Wings, Bruins — always will have legions of passionate and well-educated followers.
But the Knights are new kids on the frozen pond. Like the new girl in school, or the new boy, there is curiosity. Everybody wants to get to know them. Everybody wants to ask them to the dance.
Everybody wants to rock the jersey with the Knight’s crest on front and the gold lame on the sleeves.
“In our sport, it’s very tribal,” NHL.com hockey columnist Nick Cotsonika said during the second-period intermission Saturday. “This is a very special story, from what happened on Oct. 1, to how the team has played.
“Everybody likes to root for a new team, especially young fans. This is a team you can root for from the start and call it your own.”
Regardless of which side of the equator one lives.
I recently wrote about a female follower of the Knights who traveled nearly 10,000 miles from Perth, Australia, to see her heroes shoot the puck and occasionally ice it; this week, I heard from a hockey fan named Aline who works in the Arctic Circle and has developed an allegiance to the team.
Now that’s a widespread fan base.
Super sales
It was recently reported the Knights lead the NHL in merchandise sales, and that was before Lady Liberty in the New York-New York harbor was measured for a 28-foot, 600-pound Knights sweater that took 400 man hours to assemble.
“It’s really safe to assume that we’ve never seen this kind of response,” to an expansion team, said Jack Boyle, co-president of retail sales for Fanatics North America.
Now all of this aside, it took the Dallas Cowboys from 1960 until 1978 to become America’s football team, so perhaps it is premature to anoint the Knights as hockey’s equivalent. Fame and success at this level can be as fleeting as a 2-0 lead in the second period of a nationally televised playoff game.
The salary cap, like the hockey stick in Terrible Ted Lindsay’s day, is a great equalizer.
But that one can imagine Drew Doughty, defenseman non grata for the L.A. Kings, skating to the middle of the ice and disrespecting the Golden Knights’ logo in the not-too-distant future shows what can be accomplished with a good blueprint, a hot goaltender and a TV dish that can pick up AT&T SportsNet.
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Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.
