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> 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> 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> 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> 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. </s> The Vegas Golden Knights seem to be the talk of the town these days.

After the expansion club defeated the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday to advance to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season, experts have been quick to call Vegas the best expansion team ever.

But how did the name, Vegas Golden Knights, originate?

According to owner Bill Foley, the organization wanted a powerful warrior to represent Las Vegas.

"We are now the Golden Knights," he said in November. "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. And hockey players are warriors and they're team players, they're not individuals, they're playing together."

Foley was reportedly deciding between the Silver Knights and Desert Knights as the team's name, but ultimately decided on Golden Knights. </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> The Vegas Golden Knights are in their inaugural season, and they’re making history for an NHL expansion franchise. Now up 3-0 in their series with the Kings, the Golden Knights look poised to move on to the second round.

And maybe, just maybe, they’ll earn the respect of the Los Angeles Kings. Because back in September, they certainly didn’t have it.

On Tuesday, NHL fans uncovered a Kings tweet from a Twitter argument in September that mocked the Golden Knights as “wannabes.” The tweet did not age well … at all.

That, of course, opened the Kings up to plenty of mocking on Twitter as they now face elimination at the hands of the Golden Knights.

Yeah, the Kings probably deserved that.

They might want to take notes from the NBA after brand accounts were encouraged to be nicer to one another. The Sacramento Kings and Atlanta Hawks followed the guidelines to perfection.

The Golden Knights will have a chance to complete the sweep on Tuesday night in Los Angeles.
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.