VEGASKING
Registered User
Kind of a role call thread to start since we're all fans of different teams and don't really know one another yet. If you're from the Las Vegas valley check in and say hi.
But all are welcome
Australian, never been to Las Vegas, only Brisvegas (Brisbane) Attend Uni at U of Michigan. Have only attended 1 hockey game which was at Yost, so quite a hockey noob. Excited to begin anew with a brand new club. Somewhat supported the Rangers and Red Wings this past season before deciding to support Las Vegas. Going to pre-apologise for any ignorant questions or statements I make here.
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Hey guys, outsider here. I was wondering what the local sports culture is like down in Vegas. I find Vegas to be unique in that there's no definitive major league team you think of when thinking about the city, with the NHL's Aces/Knights/Whatever being the first. Many cities you go to you've got the teams, the fans, the stadiums, and a history of supporting a team. If the NHL were expanding to a place like Seattle or Houston for example, you'd have Seahawks, Texans, Mariners, Astros, etc fans already with the sports mentality and loyalty to their city, and this forum would be abuzz with fans from those different sports. Maybe even some early trash talk with Vancouver or Dallas.
It'll in seeing how the sports culture in Vegas grows, especially if the Oakland Raiders move to the city. It'll be interesting to see the growth of Vegas over the next generation. 25 years from now you'll have guys reminiscing about the old times and sharing memories about their favourite childhood players, reminiscing about times from the T-Mobile Arena (TMA for short eventually?).
Right now the culture is either A.) reminiscing about the Tarkanian era UNLV basketball team b.) a smattering of fans from all over the country of different sports, waiting eagerly for a team to call our own.
This is undoubtedly a sports city. We just haven't had a pro sports team. That changed today
DuckJet hit it 100% on the head. The majority of sports fans in town that root on any local team is pretty much UNLV men's basketball and that's mostly because we grew up during the Tark years and it was our one team that was ours. Although the Bano, Spoonhour, and Kruger (especially the Kruger, we miss him so much) years were pretty good, nothing compares to how much we loved our Tark-era Rebs.
Now in minor league sports, we (as in the majority of the city) cared a lot, only when they were winning: late 80s Las Vegas Stars (now 51s baseball), indoor soccer for one year (bc the Dustdevils won the CISL title in '94 {last professional sports title the city has won}), Thunder in the early 90s and Wranglers in the late 2000s.
We've never really had a team to call our own and most fans, transplants and natives alike, have pretty much never really had allegiances to any particular team. We base our allegiances on where our families are originally from, whom our favorite players are, etc. We have the ability to watch any team, from any part of the US and Canada, at anytime we want, so we can pick and choose to be fans of different cities in different sports, regardless of those cities are rivals (like being a NY Rangers fan and being a Boston Red Sox fan). Now with this team, everything changes, transplants will have a team that they can support 95% of the time and people who are born in LV, whether they live there currently or moved away, will have a franchise that they can tie themselves to bc it is a representation of our community. This team is finally something that we can claim as our own, when we've been so used to claiming a piece of another city.
I know right? I was worried we'd have to wait a few months or something.
We couldn't celebrate in the Business of Hockey thread without people raining on our parade with the usual "this will surely be a failure" posts.