LAS VEGAS, NV – JUNE 21: The newest members of the Las Vegas Golden Knights address the crowd during the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft Roundtable at T-Mobile Arena on June 21, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

The Vegas Golden Knights begin their inaugural NHL season in October and there’s really no telling how things are going to go for the league’s 31st franchise. At the very least, the infusion of new blood into the league for the first time since 2000 should be exciting, even if it takes a bit of time for the Golden Knights to become truly competitive.

That being said, the crew here at The Comeback are still pretty excited for the Golden Knights to get things started. We gathered and came up with our top seven reasons why we’re eager to watch some Golden Knights hockey.

It’s something new for the NHL

Taylor Nigrelli: I’m excited for Vegas because it will break the monotony of the past few years, if nothing else. The league hasn’t expanded in almost two decades and the only real change in that time has been a franchise no one cared about moving to a place that already hosted a team. It’s good to have a new city and fan base to experience, even if they won’t be good right away.

They’re a blank slate

Sam Blazer: I am excited to see where they go with it all. The blank slate is a fun and exciting thought. As a Blue Jackets fan, I was too young to remember a lot of the team building portion. (That, or I repressed it all.)

David Rogers: The Golden Knights don’t carry any expectations into their first season. They don’t have a history, they don’t have any failures or successes and they don’t have any trends we can try to draw conclusions from. We love to draw conclusions on teams based on their previous season, but what do you do when the team doesn’t have a previous season? You sit back and enjoy.

LAS VEGAS, NV – JUNE 21: Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury poses in the press room after Fleury is taken by the Vegas Golden Knights in the expansion draft during the 2017 NHL Awards and Expansion Draft at T-Mobile Arena on June 21, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

The roster is super random

David Rogers: If you don’t remember any of the NHL’s previous expansion drafts, the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft was probably a real treat to witness. The Golden Knights assembled a roster of players from all across the league, producing a bizarre, yet fascinating hodgepodge of talent. There’s no telling how this group will perform together with most of the pieces having no previous experience with one another.

It’s a non-traditional market

Sam Blazer: Doing this in a non-traditional market is an even more exciting thought because risk isn’t always in the NHL’s wheelhouse. An outside-the-norm decision is a commendable move. The team could be bad for the first three years, but the excitement for the team is going to live on for much, much longer.

Road trip!

John Coppinger: There are so many obvious reasons to be excited about the Vegas Golden Knights. There hasn’t been a new team in a while, and it’s always fun to see how a group of players from all different teams mesh. Plus, if you’re into seeing your team on the road once a year for a special trip, Vegas is a great excuse to see your team on the road and I think road fans are going to make up a lot of the gate in the next five years.

Unique in-game entertainment

David Rogers: You expect the unexpected when you place a hockey team in Vegas. The Golden Knights have already delivered, teaming up with Cirque du Soleil for their in-game entertainment. That’s incredible and I can’t wait to see what else they have in store.

31 teams now, 32 teams later

John Coppinger:  I’m excited for Vegas as an NHL team for a strange reason. Vegas makes 31 teams and that means eventually there are going to be 32. And I’m excited as much for who the next NHL city is going to be almost as much as I’m excited to see a hockey team in Vegas.

Who will it be? Seattle? Quebec City? Hamilton? Houston? I know it’s kind of like getting excited about a presidential election just as soon as the last one ended, but I’m excited to speculate on who number 32 will be.

About David Rogers

Editor for The Comeback and Contributing Editor for Awful Announcing. Lover of hockey, soccer and all things pop culture.

2 thoughts on “7 reasons why we’re excited about the Vegas Golden Knights

  1. The NHL not only shouldn’t have expanded, but promised that they wouldn’t. They screwed the pooch, watered down the league, lied to their entire fanbase, and gave false cause as to why it needed to happen. Sorry, there is nothing to be excited about with this team, and I will probably just never acknowledge their existence, as well most should.

  2. This team shouldn’t exist. The questions about expansion kept getting answered with, “We’re not looking to expand at this time.” There are failing teams that need new markets if not contract, which makes expansion just asinine. Plus, move detroit back where it started, and there’s no mess to clean up that miraculously injects a billion dollars into the league budget, and suddenly nobody has standards anymore. To be honest, I probably will never pay attention to this team, possibly ignoring that portion of my team’s schedule as if they were playing the Soviet Red Army, only less interesting.

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