Intersection

The NHL’s arrival in Las Vegas is something worth celebrating

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When the National Hockey League drops the puck on its 2017-2018 season next fall, Las Vegas will become a major-league city in the most literal sense.
Illustration: Jon Estrada

Las Vegas has grown in so many ways during the 18 years since I moved here—in population, in physical sprawl, as a food city, as a music town. But for some of us, a massive hole has remained, one finally set to be filled in the months to come.

When the National Hockey League drops the puck on its 2017-2018 season next fall, Las Vegas will become a major-league city in the most literal sense. An obstacle once considered immovable will have been obliterated, and if things go well, franchises in more of the big-four pro sports leagues seem likely to follow.

Preeminent stats man Nate Silver doesn’t seem to think it will go well. In a piece on his FiveThirtyEight.com blog written in April 2015 and reposted last week when word of the NHL’s impending expansion got out, Silver questioned whether Las Vegas has what it takes to support a squad. Doubting hockey’s prospects of succeeding in the desert isn’t preposterous—the Coyotes have struggled to draw, on and off, since moving from Winnipeg to Phoenix in 1996. But a key element of Silver’s analysis rings hollow, and speaks to his apparent unfamiliarity with our Valley.

“[Las Vegas] has had several professional sports franchises … and it hasn’t supported them very well,” Silver writes, and then references attendance figures for baseball’s 51s and the defunct hockey Wranglers and arena football Gladiators. Minor-league games can be fun, no doubt, but drawing a line from their appeal to that of the big leagues feels like comparing apples to tacos. By that logic, concert promoters should never have booked huge touring acts here, since local bands often play to small crowds.

I only caught the Wranglers a few times and the minor-league hockey club that preceded them, the Thunder, once or twice back in the day, yet I’m planning to soak up as much of the new team’s first season as I can afford. Witnessing the world’s absolute best hockey players up close is a big part of it, as is getting in on the ground floor of a shiny new squad playing in a shiny new arena.

But I’ll largely be there to celebrate a milestone achievement by my adopted hometown, and to do my part to make sure it’s the beginning, rather than the end, of Las Vegas’ next chapter.

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Spencer Patterson

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