After many months of waiting the Vegas NHL team finally gained it’s identity in late November, unveiling its name to the world at an event outside of T-Mobile Arena in front of 5,000 people.
The Vegas Golden Knights won out over both Desert Knights and Silver Knights. Even though at first I wasn’t a big of of the “Knights” identity it has been growing on me and the logo is one of the cleanest ones for an expansion team in quite some time in the big four.
The branding of Golden Knights hasn’t gone over without controversy and now the idea of the name being changed has been discussed in some circles. The US Army’s Parachute team has used the name “Golden Knights” since the 1960s and has said that they will be looking into the situation.
Should the name be changed? In my mind we should be able to come to some sort of agreement with this to avoid Vegas to have to change their whole identity. It’s not as if the US Army Golden Knights or Vegas Golden Knights are in the same state so that constant confusion shouldn’t occur as the parachute team is based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
If the US Army team was based out of Nevada and we were to run into a “same city/state, same name” situation which happened at various points in the history of the NFL and MLB (St. Louis, New York and Boston for example at various points at the exact same time had teams with the same name) I could see the issue but that is not the case here.
The US Army Golden Knights also use a pretty different colour scheme and helmet design than compared to the one of Vegas. Be the judge for yourself!
The gold is almost more of a yellow while Vegas uses a truer representation of gold along with more colours in the logo in the form of steel grey, red and black.
The odds of a brand change seem pretty slim but it’s happened before due to similarities with other entities. Before the 1995 NFL season the Jacksonville Jaguars changed their original logo and jersey scheme due to a threat of a lawsuit from the Ford Motor Company which, at the time, owned Jaguar and claimed that the football Jaguars’ logo was too similar to that of the car brand’s.
If the team were forced to abandon the Golden Knights as a brand or even the whole idea of having Knights as a whole in the name there are two names that I feel should been used as alternates. One of the names is the Vegas Night.
The ownership group would most likely retain only using Vegas and not Las Vegas for any alternate name as Bill Foley has stated that that’s what locals refer to the city. Night plays into the city’s identity without directly correlating it to gambling references which were totally ruled out for a name by the NHL hence no Aces or Gamblers being on the table as a name from day one.
Night has only been used once for a team name at the professional level as New Orleans first entry into the Arena Football League used the name night for two seasons in the early 1990s.
The other name is Peregrines. The Peregrine falcon is a state bird of Nevada but it’s also a bird of prey that is known for being able to catch prey in mid air and dive 200 miles per hour!!!!
Ok, maybe a mascot well known for diving is an opening for jokes, but either way it sounds like the peregrine is a bird you don’t want to mess with. I’ve never been big on angry animals as a logo but if done correctly, and if the Golden Knights logo has been any indication, those in charge of designing logos for Vegas would probably have an incredible fierce looking Peregrine one.
At the end of the day I do think that Golden Knights will be retained for the hockey franchise but stranger things have certainly happened with a brand and in hockey.
OILERS RIG LIVE4MS
Our 4th annual fundraiser for the MS Society of Alberta is set for January 21, 2017 at The Pint Downtown, at 6:30pm
It’s a Battle of Alberta on HNIC, with the Oilers in Calgary. Puck drop is 8:00pm.
We’ll have a great lineup of silent auction items, as well as raffles throughout the night. We might even have tshirts for sale (but we’ll let you know as we get closer to the date).
All proceeds from the fundraiser go to the MS Society of Alberta.
See you there!
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