By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
The partisan crowd was mostly dressed in steel grey, a gigantic, glowing Golden Knights helmet descended from the arena rafters to the ice, and a record 18,479 fans packed T-Mobile Arena Wednesday night.
Las Vegas, welcome to Stanley Cup playoff hockey.
The Golden Knights defeated their division rival LA Kings, 1-0, and there was a passionate, intense vibe to the big ice house on the Strip that filled the arena thanks to a crowd of mostly Golden Knights fans. The team’s management rolled out an innovative playoff ticket sales strategy to accomplish exactly that.
“The atmosphere inside T-Mobile is totally different when you don’t invite the enemy into your castle,” Golden Knights superfan Shawn Hickey tweeted.
The management goal: keep home tickets in the hands of Golden Knights fans by selling the playoff tickets to season ticket holders at a cheaper price if they took a “vow” not to re-sell the tickets on the secondary broker market. LVSportsBiz.com reported the playoff ticket strategy in March.
The team also skated through a massive knight helmet fabricated by a Henderson company, igniting the crowd even more after it was lowered to the ice with a choreographed video imagery on the center Jumbotron and intense music.
“Everything we do is to set up the guys to put them in the best position to win,” said Jonny Greco, the Golden Knights in-game entertainment chief. Greco noted the giant knight helmet will be used for all home playoff games.
And the pregame pizzazz even caught the eye of ESPN’s SportsCenter highlights show, with the massive helmet used by the team for its players to whiz through getting some air time. Long-time commentator and former Kings coach Barry Melrose lauded the in-game entertainment features during the SportsCenter hockey segment after the Golden Knights’ win.
The intense pregame vibe was matched by the Golden Knights’ passionate play from the get-go, and defenseman Shea Thoedore’s goal a mere 3:23 into the contest stood up as goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury stonewalled the veteran Kings squad. Fans won free donuts thanks to Fleury’s shutout.
LVSportsBiz.com asked coach Gerard Gallant about the impact of the intense pregame program on the team’s quick start and he joked that he thought his team got off to a quick start thanks to his pre-game speech.
“They expected the ovation. It went to another level tonight,” Gallant said.
“Coming out of the helmet today, that’s stuff the organization does,” Gallant said.
Even Golden Knights forward Jonathan Marchessault noticed the fans’ impact from the start.
“We expected a lot from our crowd,” Marchessault said in the Knights’ locker room. “And they showed up.”
So did the Golden Knights players, who played a physical, hard-hitting game.
LVSportsBiz.com also caught up with fan favorite Cameron Hughes, the self-described “crowd igniter” known for his dancing antics to fire up crowds at T-Mobile Arena and 17 other NHL venues.
Before the game, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said the NHL signed a three-year deal with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) to keep the NHL Awards show in Las Vegas. This year’s event is June 20 The Joint at the Hard Rock.
Meanwhile, fans out on the plaza outside T-Mobile Arena enjoyed a concert by rapper Logic.
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