Maggie Sweeney has gone from Original Six to New Kids on the Block during her National Hockey League career.
A native of Cleveland (“I didn’t have a hockey team growing up,” she laments), Sweeney spent nine years with the Detroit Red Wings, working her way up to director of retail for that organization—and for the Detroit Pistons and both of those teams’ Little Caesars Arena—before moving to Las Vegas.
Once here, Sweeney began heading up the UFC retail account for the local company Legends before rejoining the hockey world in 2021 with the Vegas Golden Knights as their director of retail operations.
We caught up with Sweeney in the days leading up to this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, to dig into the merch available at T-Mobile, City National and Lifeguard arenas and beyond.
Coming to the Golden Knights after your time with the Red Wings, how would say the two fan bases compare? The way the team was embraced here, and how quickly and wholeheartedly, is really amazing. It was amazing to watch from a distance and then even more amazing to see up close and then become a part of it. I think it goes back to being a sports fan for the fun of it, for the love of it. You don’t have years of fandom clouding things, so it’s a very pure form, and that’s really fun to see. It’s definitely a different experience than an original six team.
Do you and your retail team have freedom to introduce new items, or is it governed by the league as a whole? Both situations actually exist in the NHL. There are licensees who work with the league overall and have rights for all the teams, and they do product development. They run it through the NHL’s quality control process, and then it’s presented to us. It’s great to have that element—dedicated people who are working on things for you. And a lot of them will work with the teams specifically, so that we can make exclusive team items, add a little variety, make it market-specific. But we do have the rights to locally license and create our own products when the need calls for it. So anything that’s quick-turn or that a licensed vendor can’t produce, we get to develop on our own and work with vendors of our choice to create.
What’s a recent example of something you guys devised in-season? There have been requests for more products that feature our mascots—[VGK’s] Chance, Lucky of the Silver Knights and Risk of the Knight Hawks. One of our designers drew out this amazing piece of art with all three of them, and we recently got that in store for kids—it features all three mascots, and it says “the three best friends.” The designer had just been sketching it, in case it could ever be used, so it was great to be able to bring that to life and see people’s reaction to something that was created in our offices.
Am I right in assuming the top-selling VGK product is the jersey? Yes, and that’s not the same across the [league], so it’s great that people in this area have really embraced wearing a hockey jersey.
Which players tend to be the top jersey sellers? Your original crew that’s been here since day one, of course, always stand out and stay strong.
So Karlsson, Marchessault, Theodore … Exactly. Often, there’ll be a team where, like, 85% of jersey sales are this person, the rest is split between these two and that’s pretty much it. But for us it is spread fairly evenly. You see spikes at different times—[goaltender Logan] Thompson shot up there for a while, when he first really started to have a presence on the VGK roster, because I think this demographic has proved that they like their goalies. But for the most part, it’s the most evenly distributed numbers I’ve ever seen.
Does a new player—whether it’s a kid like Pavel Dorofeyev coming up and making a splash or someone arriving at the trade deadline—tend to drive sales? It definitely can. If someone new is coming in and I don’t feel like I have enough insight into it, our communications team is really helpful, social media, because they see all the comments out there, on what I should be prepared for. And our broadcasters—if someone’s coming in from another team, it’s like, are they going to immediately resonate here or might it take them longer? They’ll have great insight.
Aside from jerseys, what are some current items that excite you and your team? I think there’s a great enthusiasm around a lot of our themed nights and products relating to those, particularly the ones that raise awareness for causes, like Hockey Fights Cancer and Military Appreciation. And VGK has introduced their own theme nights, like Hispanic Heritage, which has been really well-received and really well-designed by our team internally.
Hats. No one can ever have too many hats. And if I’m on the other side of the country and I spot a Vegas Golden Knights hat, that’s an exciting moment. There are also fun products that aren’t wearables—just a great comfy blanket that people can have in their home because VGK is such a part of their life. And we’ll do some things on a limited basis, like game-day pucks in small, exclusive runs. We have one at City National Arena in the morning on a game day that’s only 48 pieces. Giving people something to remember an experience by is fun.
To close, what’s it like for you to walk into an arena and see so much stuff that originated with you and your team? That’s great, and hearing people’s reactions is helpful. But I think for anyone in this organization, when you walk into the arena and it’s full of fans, it reminds us why we do what we do. We get to walk into a building with 20,000 people who are pumped to be there.
And from a retail standpoint, how exciting is it being back in the playoffs? More hockey games makes everyone happy, right?
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