LAS VEGAS -- Five months after being awarded an NHL franchise, Las Vegas' expansion team finally has a name. The Vegas Golden Knights will be the city's first major professional sports team when they begin play in the 2017-18 season.

Golden Knights owner Bill Foley made the announcement, alongside NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and team general manager George McPhee, in front of a raucous crowd outside the recently constructed T-Mobile Arena, the team's new home, located just off the Las Vegas Strip.

"We now have an identity," Foley told ESPN.com just before the announcement. "My whole idea was to create a logo and a name that was powerful that would epitomize the warrior class. The Knights are the epitome of the warrior class, the top of the line in terms of defending the realm, defending the unprotected. This is all part of the culture we want to create with the hockey team."

The NHL announced that Las Vegas would be home to the league's 31st team after a board of governors meeting in the city on June 22. Not only will the Golden Knights be the NHL's first expansion team since the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild during the 2000-01 season, but they also will become the first of the four major North American professional sports leagues to have a team in Las Vegas.

Foley said he went with "Vegas" instead of "Las Vegas" for the NHL team name because that is how most locals refer to the city.

"We now have an identity," Golden Knights owner Bill Foley told ESPN. AP Photo/John Locher

Jerseys for the Golden Knights will not be for sale until mid-February, at the earliest, Foley said. But other items, such as T-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, polo shirts, shorts and gym bags, were sold outside the arena shortly after the announcement was made on Tuesday night.

"I think the day upon which you begin to create the identity of a franchise is the day that fans can begin to have their emotional connection to the club," Bettman told ESPN.com. "And while five months ago to the day we announced that the expansion was going to be a reality, I think today will mark it feeling real ... if you're a fan and you can get a T-shirt or a hat, this then begins to signify the beginning of fandom."

Shortly after the name and logo for the Golden Knights was revealed outside of T-Mobile Arena, which rests just behind the Monte Carlo and New York-New York Hotel and Casino, hotels up and down the Strip were scheduled to reveal signs welcoming the Golden Knights to Las Vegas.

The team has already sold more than 14,000 season tickets and most of the luxury seats inside the 17,500-seat T-Mobile Arena for next season. While Foley expects games to be popular destinations for traveling fans, he also believes that 85 percent to 90 percent of the crowds during the regular season will be made up of season-ticket holders.

Foley, a graduate of the United States Military Academy, had originally wanted to call the team the Black Knights, after Army's athletic nickname, but he encountered some resistance. Foley was already the chairman of the board for Black Knight Financial Services and the lead investor in Black Knight Sports & Entertainment, the consortium he started along with the Maloof family, which owns the team. He settled on three finalists: Golden Knights, Silver Knights and Desert Knights, before going with Golden Knights in August and working with Adidas on the logo, which was completed in late October.

While the Golden Knights are about 11 months away from playing their first game, the team is slowly beginning to take shape. Foley hired McPhee to be the team's first general manager in July. McPhee was the Washington Capitals general manager from 1997 to 2014. Kerry Bubolz was hired as team president in October after 13 years with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Quicken Loans Arena organization. And last month, the team broke ground on a state-of-the-art practice facility in Summerlin, Nevada -- a suburb located about 15 miles from the Las Vegas Strip and where the team's offices are located.

The Golden Knights, which will be the eighth team in the Pacific Division and the 15th team in the Western Conference, will acquire their first players on June 21, when their selections from the expansion draft are announced. Las Vegas must select one player from each of the 30 existing teams. Two days later, the team will select their first rookies in the NHL draft. They are guaranteed to have no lower than the sixth overall pick in the draft and will own the third pick in each subsequent round.

"This whole process has really been a whirlwind," Foley said. "We'll be playing games before you know it."

ESPN.com senior writer Scott Burnside contributed to this report.</s>Welcome to the world, the Vegas Golden Knights.

Tuesday evening, a brand was born that will bring worldwide publicity to the city and an identity for an expansion hockey team which will represent Nevada as the state’s first major league professional sports franchise.

The Golden Knights’ name was announced amid fanfare at Toshiba Plaza as an estimated 5,000 people waited outside the team’s home, T-Mobile Arena. They listened to speeches from team majority owner Bill Foley, general manager George McPhee and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman before the revealing of the nickname, colors and logo.

There was a glitch in the video preceding the announcement which prompted Foley to say, “We’ll do better on the rink than that.”

“This is really an important step for us,” Foley said. “Since we were awarded the franchise in June, we were the Las Vegas hockey team. Now, we have our name and our identity. We are the Vegas Golden Knights.”

Bettman said at the ceremony: “This team now has an identity that is all for the fans. If this is indicative of the support this town has, I look forward to one day returning here and presenting the team with the Stanley Cup.”

Foley said he purposely left off the word “Las” for the team name because he said locals call the town “Vegas” and thought he could connect better with them.

“In talking to locals, everyone seems to call it ‘Vegas,’” Foley said. “I also thought ‘Las Vegas Golden Knights’ was too long. So we shortened it and it sounds great to me.”

“Everyone knows where Vegas is,” he said.

Foley, a West Point graduate, was originally going to call the team the Black Knights. He backed off because he was afraid of the social and political repercussions of naming the team after his alma mater.

While he didn’t get the name he desired, he did get West Point’s colors for his team. The Knights will wear black, gold, steel gray, white and red in their uniforms, which will be made by adidas and are expected to be available late spring after the company replaces Reebok as the NHL’s official sportswear supplier.

Officials said the Knights’ home jersey will be primarily steel gray with black and gold trim, along with white and red accents. The road uniform will be white with black, gold, gray and red. In the NHL, the home uniform is dark and the road jersey is white.

The crest, which primarily is black and gold with some gray, has a knight’s helmet with a “V’ on the face within a five-sided shield. The shoulder logo has two swords intersecting and will be white, red and gold on a black background. The uniforms will be unveiled at a later date.

The team’s website was also unveiled Tuesday and will be nhl.com/goldenknights and the team’s Twitter account will be @goldenknights. On Facebook, the account is “Vegas Golden Knights.”

Long before the NHL granted Foley his franchise on June 22, he had been inundated with suggestions on what to call his team. There were hundreds of names, from the creative to the absurd. The NHL also preferred he not consider a name that had gambling ties or implications, which was fine by him.

He did consider the name “Knighthawks” but he said he couldn’t create a culture around the bird. Same for “Scorpions,” “Sidewinders” and “Desert Hawks.”

“We looked hard at those names but the connection wasn’t quite what I was looking for,” Foley said.

The truth is, Foley had always believed his team would be some sort of Knights. To him, the Knight represents nobility, toughness, fearlessness and camaraderie, the qualities he wants his team to exemplify when it hits the ice next October.

“I’m very keen on this culture,” Foley said. “Hockey players are soldiers. They look after each other. It’s not about them. it’s about the team. I wanted a name that represented that and I think with our name and our logo, we have it.”

Foley believes the look will be accepted, not only in Las Vegas but internationally. With the team name and logo now in place, he can start selling the Knights’ brand.

“We want to be the world’s NHL team,” Foley said. “Las Vegas has a worldwide reputation and we are Las Vegas’ team. I know we’re going to sell a lot of jerseys, once we have them to sell.”

Contact Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow @stevecarprj on Twitter.</s>Las Vegas hockey fans had to wait five months, but they finally know the name of their National Hockey League expansion team — Vegas Golden Knights.

Team owner Bill Foley and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman officially revealed the Vegas Golden Knights’ name and logo to the thousands attending the party on the Las Vegas Strip at Toshiba Plaza.

Here’s a look at the reaction from social media:</s>A video meant to build up to the unveiling failed to run properly at the Toshiba Plaza outside their new T-Mobile Arena, leaving owner Bill Foley and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman stalling for time as technicians tried to fix the problem.

When that failed, they abandoned the video and did a countdown to presenting the team name and logo.

When the name was revealed above the logo of a knight's helmet with a "V" formed in the face of it, fireworks were set off and confetti fell on the cheering crowd.

"I guarantee you we will be better in the rink," shouted majority owner Foley, making light of the video problems.

Five months ago, the National Hockey League decided to roll the dice on expanding to Las Vegas as its 31st franchise, and the first expansion team since 2000 when Columbus and Minnesota were added.

The Golden Knights will begin play in the 2017-18 season.

"We believe in this market," said Commissioner Bettman. "This is a great town. We know everybody here has been hoping for a professional sports team. We're thrilled it's hockey.

"We think by having Las Vegas in the league, it makes the league and hockey stronger. Las Vegas has great visibility."

Foley, chairman of U.S. title insurance services provider Fidelity National Financial , gambled a $500 million franchise fee that Las Vegas will support an NHL team.

The team will play out of the T-Mobile Arena, a new multipurpose building on the south end of the famous Las Vegas Strip that can seat 17,500 for ice hockey.</s>The NHL’s newest team is named the Vegas Golden Knights.

Owner Bill Foley and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced the Las Vegas expansion franchise’s official name and revealed its logo and colours Tuesday night at a gala ceremony for about 5,000 fans outside T-Mobile Arena, where the Golden Knights will begin play next season.

The Golden Knights’ logo is a simple front view of a fighting helmet with a conspicuous “V” in the middle. Their colours are steel grey, gold, red and black.

“Our logo and our name is really going to exhibit the highest element of the warrior class – the knight,” Foley told the crowd. “The knight protects the unprotected. The knight defends the realm. The knight never gives up, never gives in, always advances, never retreats. And that is what our team is going to be.”

Related: Everything you need to know about NHL expansion

The NHL awarded its 31st franchise in June to this gambling mecca in the Mojave Desert. Foley is a billionaire businessman who sold the league on the potential of being the first major pro sports franchise in the growing market while playing in a new $375-million arena already constructed on the south end of the Strip.

The franchise made its name announcement near an outdoor rink where young hockey players braved the 58-degree nighttime temperatures in Vegas’s desert basin. The ceremony endured technical difficulties when a video presentation refused to run, prompting Foley and Bettman to kill time.

Bettman grinningly encouraged the fans to boo him, saying it’s a true indication that Las Vegas is a real NHL city.

“Believe me, we won’t screw up the first game like we screwed up the video,” Foley said with a laugh.

Foley paid $500-million as an expansion fee to the other 30 ownership groups, and the West Point graduate strongly considered naming his team the Black Knights in honour of his Army roots.

He changed his mind during the lengthy process of developing a brand and an identity for his team, but Foley kept a military touch in the name despite some local criticism for its lack of a connection to Las Vegas. Foley has said the team didn’t want to include an overt gambling reference in the name, but also considered Desert Knights and Silver Knights.

Fans chanted Foley’s name when he stepped to the podium to make the announcement.

“I’m very proud of our name, and I’m very proud of our logo,” Foley said.

The team has been enthusiastically received in southern Nevada, which is getting the first major professional sports franchise in a market of nearly 1.4 million. Foley led a successful drive that landed several thousand deposits on season tickets months before the NHL officially granted a team to the city.

The Golden Knights immediately began selling team merchandise at the announcement.</s>The long-awaited name of the city's first major league sports franchise was revealed during a public ceremony at the Toshiba Plaza outside T-Mobile Arena.

The team's colors are steel grey, gold, red and black. The helmet in the team's logo includes a 'V' to represent Las Vegas. The secondary logos include swords that create the star from the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.

"The Vegas Golden Knights team name and logo embody this great city and the mission of our team," said one of the founding partners, Bill Foley.

Foley's family and the Maloof family make up the rest of the founding partnership. The NHL's 31st team is owned and operated by Black Knight Sports and Entertainment, LLC.

Foley is the chairman of Black Knight Financial Services. His alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy, has sports teams called the Black Knights.

Foley said he went with "Vegas" instead of "Las Vegas" for the NHL team name because that is how most locals refer to the city, according to ESPN's Arash Markazi.</s>Beneath a Vegas Golden Knights hat so new that price stickers were still attached, local NHL expansion franchise owner Bill Foley gushed over his team’s finally announced name Tuesday night at Toshiba Plaza.

Golden Knights was on Foley’s list of finalists since this summer and remained the choice he fancied the most throughout.

“Silver Knights was an option because this is the Silver State, but Nevada is the largest gold producer in the country,” Foley said. “Gold is a precious metal, the No. 1 metal versus silver. I didn’t feel Desert Knights had character to it.”

Desert Knights and Silver Knights seemingly had more community support out of the rumored finalists. Even the long-shuttered Black Knights beat Golden Knights in a fan poll the franchise put out on social media.

But Golden Knights had the votes that mattered, as approximately 5,000 fans who attended Tuesday night’s public ceremony discovered after Foley led a countdown that revealed the name and logo on the T-Mobile Arena outdoor video board.

“When we pushed names around in meetings, they asked me what I thought of Golden Knights, and I said, ‘That’s my favorite,’” General Manager George McPhee reminisced. “It was almost unanimous. It was almost everyone’s favorite.”

Foley said the team had received the NHL’s clearance and decided to go with the Golden Knights in September, fulfilling the initial timeline to choose a name he detailed upon officially landing the team in June. The delay came from preparing and refining the logo.

The primary symbol was first a knight in armor before briefly switching to a knight on a horse until Foley settled on the black and golden seal with a helmet presented at Tuesday’s announcement. A “V” is outlined in the middle to symbolize “Vegas” while the gold is also supposed to represent the color of the local terrain.

A secondary logo features crossing swords that create a star from the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. The star is a metallic red to embody the Las Vegas skyline and Red Rock canyons.

The Golden Knights’ primary color will be steel gray meant to signify strength and durability.

“It will represent your team and your city well,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said of the logos.

There was one major hiccup with the announcement. Foley’s team had prepared a video to show before illuminating the logo, but it twice failed to play and left fans chanting, “say the name.”

Although it made for an awkward moment, neither Foley nor McPhee was concerned with the malfunction afterward. They thought the excitement generated by the logo outweighed it.

“It feels like you were part of U2 or the Rolling Stones or something,” McPhee said.

Foley added, “I thought people were going crazy. I wanted to have a successful name and a successful logo, and we’ve done it.”

The scramble for official Golden Knights merchandise — including T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts manufactured by Adidas — may have proven it. An hour after the announcement was made, a line still stretched out to the street.

The on-site pop-up shop expected to sell out of everything before the end of the night.

“Hopefully there’s some left,” said Brian McLeod, a 39-year-old local season-ticket holder originally from Spokane, Wash. “There are several hundred people ahead of us in line. I’m hoping to get a couple shirts, a hat and maybe some stuff for the folks back home.”

If fans were unhappy with the name, they weren’t showing it after the event as they reveled in gathering handfuls of gear.

“I liked the Knight but I thought it might have been better if they would have done something other than Knight because of the whole L.A. Kings thing,” said David Thummel, a 27-year-old local planning to purchase a hoodie.

A wrinkle that generated much discussion was using “Vegas” instead of “Las Vegas” for the city name. Foley cited two reasons.

“The local people refer to Vegas, not Las Vegas,” he said. “The people from out of town refer to, ‘Las Vegas.’ It’s, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Oh, I’m from Vegas.”

“I thought Las Vegas Golden Knights, four words, too much. Three words is kind of the limit.”

With the logo circulating on social media a couple of hours before the announcement, Vegas Golden Knights quickly surpassed Las Vegas Desert Knights as the most heavily rumored name. But Foley regarded it as “amazing” that the name never officially leaked.

The franchise went to extraordinary lengths to protect its secret. McPhee didn’t even tell his wife or children the name in the two months since he learned it.

“My rationale was twofold,” McPhee said. “One, it’s a great lesson for your kids. If someone tells you something, you don’t tell anyone else and you don’t have anything to worry about. But we wanted to keep it quiet.”

Foley mentioned Nighthawks, Desert Hawks and Sidewinders as a few of his runners-up. He could never shake a desire to incorporate Knights, however, in an ode to his West Point alma mater.

Golden Knights is the name of the school’s parachuting team, which further drew in Foley. But it was only a small part of the appeal of Golden Knights.

“It exudes everything I’m proud of and everything I believe in as far as creating this team and the culture we’re going to have around this team,” he said.

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or case.keefer@lasvegassun.com. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.</s>Fans no longer need to refer to Las Vegas’ impending first major professional sports team as, “the NHL expansion franchise.” They’re the Vegas Golden Knights.

Team owner Bill Foley, alongside General Manager George McPhee and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, announced the name Tuesday night during a fan event at Toshiba Plaza outside of T-Mobile Arena.

They also revealed the logo, a knight's helmet with a V etched into the middle. The colors are black with a gold outline, as Foley had long preferred. The first-ever Golden Knights merchandise went on sale as part of the event.

The announcement brings an end to the franchise’s most publicly scrutinized decision since the NHL Board of Governors awarded the team in June. Foley said at the time that he had eight or nine possible names and hoped to decide by the end of September.

It took longer than expected to pare down the list working with the NHL, but wound up similar to where the search started. Foley initially expressed interested in calling the team the Black Knights after his West Point alma mater.

Local fans largely railed against that possibility, as well as other rumored names like the Nighthawks. Foley ultimately landed on a choice that he believed both fulfilled his desire to use Knights and connected with the community.

The next milestone event for the Golden Knights will come in June 2017, when they engage in an expansion draft. The 2017 NHL Entry Draft will follow days later to fill out the roster ahead of the inaugural season.

Check back to lasvegassun.com later for more coverage of the Golden Knights and the naming reveal.

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or case.keefer@lasvegassun.com. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.</s>In an office building in suburban Las Vegas, an NHL franchise is taking shape.

It has been five months since the NHL awarded Las Vegas an expansion team on June 22. It will be about 11 more months before the team plays its first regular-season game.

But as the NHL’s other 30 teams settle into the rhythms of a long season, the Las Vegas franchise, the NHL’s first expansion team since the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild were added in 2000, is building its staff and expanding its local footprint.

The team checked a big item off its to-do list Tuesday night, unveiling its name, the Vegas Golden Knights, and its blue, black and gold logo in a ceremony outside the new T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip, where the team will play.

“The knight never gives up, never gives in, always advances, never retreats,” said Bill Foley, the team’s majority owner. “And that’s what our team is going to be.”

Foley, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, had hoped to call the team the Black Knights but encountered resistance, including some from West Point.

In an interview this month, Foley said that he had settled on a name by the end of August and that team representatives had been working with Adidas on a logo since mid-July. It was not ready until late October.

“Everyone has an opinion, I can tell you that,” Foley said. “I was trying to do consensus-building for a while; then I stopped.”

If people do not like the name, he added, “it’s going to be on me.”

Foley at least has some company in decision-making now. After the Las Vegas ownership group, which includes the Maloof family, the former owners of the Sacramento Kings, received permission from the NHL to conduct a season-ticket drive in December 2014 to gauge interest, Foley worked with a small group of advisers and ticket representatives.

Now Foley has cleared out a floor in an office building in Summerlin, a suburb 15 miles from the Strip, for his growing staff, which he described as around 20 “poor people living in little cubes.”

He said he had not wanted to spend money or risk capital before the team was awarded, so the past five months have been a sprint.

The first major hire was that of general manager George McPhee, who was the Washington Capitals’ general manager from 1997 to 2014. After assuming his position in July, he put together a hockey operations staff of nearly 40 people, including scouts, video specialists and an analytics department, in 60 days.

The franchise, which paid a $500 million expansion fee, has just started building its business side. Kerry Bubolz, a longtime executive with the Cleveland Cavaliers, was named team president Oct. 3. A chief marketing officer, Nehme E. Abouzeid, came aboard Nov. 7.

The infrastructure of Las Vegas’ first major professional sports team also is becoming more visible. The ice sheet was installed at T-Mobile Arena on July 30 — a 110-degree day. In early October, the arena, which seats 17,368, hosted a fan festival and its first two NHL games, preseason contests featuring the Los Angeles Kings.

In October, the team broke ground on a practice center in downtown Summerlin that is expected to be completed in August in time for training camp.

Todd Pollock, the vice president for ticketing, and his staff spent most of the past six weeks trying to convert the nearly 16,000 deposits from the ticket drive into actual season-ticket holders, and managing online seat selection.

“Phones are ringing nonstop,” he said.

For a brief period, Pollock constituted the team’s entire ticket sales staff. Pollock, who has worked for the Los Angeles Kings and the San Francisco 49ers, has been part of the operation since Foley obtained approval from the NHL for the ticket drive.

“It’s an education process for some of them,” Pollock said of Las Vegas residents. “They love hockey. They just don’t know much about it.”

The fans who gathered Tuesday night knew enough to boo Commissioner Gary Bettman, leading him to say it proved Las Vegas had become a real NHL city.

Pollock’s ticket-sales staff has grown to 10 people. They have come a long way from cold-calling bars, restaurants and community centers to “invite themselves over” to sell residents on the team, Pollock said.

Foley said that sometimes only 15 to 20 people would show up at a bar. But when 4,000 deposits were made on the first day of the drive, Foley said he thought, “Wow, people really want this.”

The team converted a strong majority of deposits into season tickets, selling about 13,800, Foley said.

“Las Vegas is so ready to have its own thing other than the Strip,” he said.

While he acknowledged that his team may have to share the city with the Oakland Raiders after they recently reached a stadium deal with the state, Foley noted that the Raiders are not owned by local residents and come with an existing fan base.

While others try to build a fan base, McPhee is trying to build a team, with the expansion draft scheduled for June 17-20 and the amateur draft three days later.

He expects to spend the next several months dividing time between Las Vegas and the road, getting his staff together once a month to review nuts and bolts.

McPhee’s analytics group is pouring over statistics of every professional team and every minor league team to rate players and build a database. His scouts are watching 25 games a night, canvassing all the NHL teams and determining the best prospects in the amateur ranks.

“We do feel like we are in a good rhythm right now,” McPhee said.

McPhee and his staff plan to do a mock expansion draft each month after doing their first in November, which produced questions for the league about the rules.

With no franchise players expected to be available in the expansion draft, McPhee said, the goal was to build a foundation. The entry draft is “where we’re going to have to hit home runs,” he added.

Saying he wanted to build the team the right way, McPhee has so far met with David Poile, who built the 1998-99 Nashville Predators, and Doug Risebrough, the first general manager of the Wild.

“The appeal of an expansion franchise is not having to dig out from problems on your arrival,” McPhee said. “You set the course immediately.”

Expansion team or not, Las Vegas or not, the goal is the same.

“It’s pretty simple: You have to win, whether in a traditional or nontraditional market,” McPhee said, before ticking off the warm-weather teams that have recently won the Stanley Cup, like Los Angeles, Anaheim and Tampa Bay. “We’re here to win.”

Foley vowed Tuesday night that the Golden Knights would win a Stanley Cup within six years, but historically, expansion teams have not won much in their early years. Of the nine NHL expansion teams since 1991, only the 1993-94 Florida Panthers (33-34-17) had a point percentage that was even close to .500 in their first season.

The NHL also wants the Las Vegas team to be competitive right away and has tried to create more favorable expansion draft rules. The Las Vegas franchise must select one player from each of the 30 existing teams, which can protect fewer players than in the previous expansion draft in 2000.

“It doesn’t feel like pressure; it feels like an opportunity,” McPhee said. “We’re going to get a better base than any expansion team has had.”

Finding that base is still months away. The name and the logo are settled, although after several technical glitches during the name unveiling, Foley promised, “We won’t screw up the first game the way we screwed up the video.”

But next on the team’s to-do list is completing sponsorship deals, negotiating TV rights and selling a bunch of new Golden Knights gear.

“The next 11 months is going to go quick,” Foley said.</s>Having already acknowledged its existence, Las Vegas’s NHL expansion team finally gets its identity Tuesday.

A celebration for the announcement of the team’s nickname, colors and logo will take place at 5:30 p.m. at Toshiba Plaza. For fans who can’t make it to the event, the announcement is being televised throughout North America on the NHL Network and streamed on ReviewJournal.com and NHL.com.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is in town for the announcement which comes exactly five months from the day he announced on June 22 that Las Vegas was joining the NHL as its 31st franchise effective 2017-18.

Speculation has it that the team will be officially named the Desert Knights, though Silver Knights and Golden Knights are also possibilities. Team majority owner Bill Foley has tried to keep the name secret and so far word hasn’t leaked out. But by the time the official name is announced just after 6 p.m. it’s likely the nickname will be well known.

“It’s the birth of a brand,” said Nehme Abouzeid, the team’s vice president and chief marketing officer. “With the name, we’ll officially be a team.”

In anticipation of the news, the team plans a big party at Toshiba Plaza. There’ll be music, entertainment from Cirque Du Soleil, a hockey rink with local youth players skating and former NHL players attending to lend their presence to the event. Admission to the event is free as is parking in the New York-New York and Monte Carlo garages.

“We worked with the NHL and we believe we have come up with something very creative,” Abouzeid said. “It’s no different than putting on a show on the Strip. A lot of work has gone into this.”

The other anticipated opportunity to come from Tuesday’s announcement is the first chance to purchase official team merchandise. The team’s store at T-Mobile Arena will open its doors following the conclusion of the ceremony and there will be other retail locations set up at the plaza.

The team is expecting a large crowd and Abouzeid said it will be ready to handle the expected rush of fans who want to be the first to own a piece of merchandise, be it a T-shirt, a hat or a sweatshirt. Jerseys, though, will not be available Tuesday and it may not be until late spring that they’ll be sold as adidas takes over from Reebok as the official supplier of NHL uniforms and it is not yet set up to manufacture jerseys.

“We’re hoping a few thousand people show up,” Abouzeid said. “We feel like we ordered enough gear to get us through the announcement.”

Whether the fans will like the name and logo remains to be seen. Many have been openly critical of having the team called the “Knights” and don’t believe it connects enough with Las Vegas and its history. But Foley said the name embodies what he wants his hockey team to represent as does the logo and the team’s colors.

Even before Foley was granted his franchise, he envisioned a grand announcement of the team name, logo and colors. The process took far longer than he anticipated but he wanted to wait until everything was in place so he could see his vision come to life.

He had been inundated with hundreds of suggestions for a nickname. His personal favorite was the Black Knights, in honor of his alma mater, West Point. But as Foley quickly learned, naming a sports team in 2016 is a lot tougher than branding a bottle of wine or a restaurant chain. There were copyright, trademark and domain name issues to overcome and he wasn’t willing to take on the Pentagon in order to call his team the Black Knights.

He had been patient while waiting for the NHL to grant him his franchise and he has remained patient through the naming process. The naming process has taken about four months, getting the NHL to sign off and for adidas to agree that it could produce everything to the team’s and the league’s specifications.

Now that the product is established, the team will have a name and a brand and the marketing will begin.

“We want to be the world’s (NHL) team,” Foley said.

Contact Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow @stevecarprj on Twitter.
In ice hockey, the identity of the Las Vegas team that will become the NHL's 31st franchise in the 2017–18 season is unveiled as the Vegas Golden Knights.