The Crowd Goes Wild At Golden Knights Game Friday

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

 

It’s hardly new, but it’s getting annoying.

 

Fans from the visiting team at T-Mobile Arena exploding with cheers when their club scores a goal on the Vegas Golden Knights in the Knights’ home building.

 

But Friday night, it seemed more pronounced as Minnesota Wild fans screamed with delight when the team scored goals and even mocked the Knights’ All-Star goaltender with chants of “Fleu-ry” in the third period of tonight’s Wild victory over the VGK.

 

The “Let’s Go Wild” chant reverberated around the arena with a minute to go in the game until the Golden Knights’ Ryan Carpenter scored with 55.3 seconds left in regulation to cut a Knights’ deficit to 3-2. But the Minnesota cheers were sounded again when the Wild scored an empty-netter with 33.9 seconds left to seal a 4-2 win over the Pacific Division leaders.

 

And many Minnesota fans did the Vikings “skol” chant in T-Mobile Arena after their hockey team won the game.

 

“It’s disappointing when the ‘Let’s Go Wild’ chants overpower our chants,” upper-bowl season ticket holder Juli Shapiro told LVSportsBiz.com between periods two and three.

 

LVSportsBiz.com spoke with Wild fans and they believe they had a 60/40 attendance percentage edge in the building over the home-team Knights before a SRO overflowing crowd of 18,295. The Golden Knights were averaging 18,010 fans after 35 home dates going into Friday night’s game. The team is filling T-Mobile Arena to 103.7 percent of capacity, good for fourth in the NHL behind Chicago, Minnesota and Washington.

 

One Wild fan, Kyle from Arizona, said he sees the Coyotes in Phoenix facing the same issues as the Knights when it comes to so many opposing team fans in the venue. He paid $200 for a ticket from a scalper but noted that many tickets on StubHub would have cost him in the $180 range.

 

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Kyle suggested the Vegas team lower its Golden Knights ticket prices to make it more appealing to more locals to buy tickets and attend home games. As it is now, many Knights season tickets holders unload their tickets to secondary market brokers such as StubHub to make money on their tickets that are seen as investments. Visiting team fans then buy the tickets that originated in the hands of Golden Knights season ticket holders.

 

Minnesota hockey fans travel well and Minnesota tourists, in general, travel well to Las Vegas, especially when it’s still winter. Throw in a game scheduled for a Friday night that allows Minnesota fans to make a weekend trek to Sin City and you had all the ingredients for a big Wild contingent in T-Mobile Arena.

 

For the record, Golden Knights coach Gerard Gallant said the Minnesota fans played no role in the game’s results and said the building sounded loud with cheers from both sides.

 

“The crowd is always loud here whether they’re cheering for Minnesota or cheering for us,” Gallant said during a post-game presser. “Our crowd has been unbelievable all year so that doesn’t have anything to do with the game.”

 

 

After the game, forward David Perron said the Minnesota crowd and its cheers motivated him even more to play better, while Erik Haula said it “sucks” to hear so many Wild fans cheering when their team scores on the Golden Knights. Haula, though, appeared to be ticked off that the Wild scored and not that the opposing team had fans cheering about it in T-Mobile Arena.

 

Wild player Mikko Koivu said he sees and hears the Minnesota fan presence in many warm-weather markets in the NHL.

 

“You appreciate that always and they get you going,” Koivu said at his locker after the game.’

 

Large numbers of visiting team fans in T-Mobile Arena are common when teams such as the Penguins, Red Wings, Blackhawks, Ducks, Kings, Flyers and Bruins visited Las Vegas.

 

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The Golden Knights do not take any strategic steps to show preference in ticket sales to hockey fans. The team has about 14,000 season ticket equivalents, and there’s no problem with filling the building.

 

But tonight, with the Golden Knights arena packed again with a standing room only crowd, the cheers seemed louder for the other guys.

 

The Stanley Cups playoffs are on the horizon and we shall see if the Golden Knights management make any moves to try and get tickets into the hands of more Golden Knights fans.

 

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