By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
Did you enjoy the 20-foot-tall Golden Knights helmet making a 45-second descent from the T-Mobile Arena rafters to the ice surface while the team’s ominous intro music played before the Knights’ playoff Game 1?
Get used to it. The team’s chief of in-game entertainment, Jonny Greco, said the Golden Knights will deploy the gigantic knight helmet prop before each of the remaining home playoff games to introduce the players to the ice.
LVSportsBiz.com caught up with Greco late Wednesday night after the Knights defeated the LA Kings, 1-0, before a VGK record home crowd of 18,479. We asked Greco what went through his mind as the giant helmet slowly dropped to the rink before the Knights’ first-ever playoff game.
Greco, a veteran of just about every major professional team sport, smiled and joked, “Terrifying.”
Greco could have some fun with it because the helmet’s dramatic delivery and its arrival on the ice came off well-choreographed with a red glow in the helmet’s interior edged with yellow lighting. The intro music, imagery on the Jumbotron center scoreboard and initial lighting distraction came together well and the players enjoyed skating through the giant helmet as the crowd roared with approval before Game 1’s face-off.
Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who led the players through the helmet and onto the ice, noted the players were told about the giant helmet on the ice and that they would enter the rink through the opening in the helmet. Fleury thought it was a cool feature, while forward Alex Tuch told LVSportsBiz.com Thursday that it helped stoke the fans.
Both Fleury and Tuch said players had to take one step to the left to make sure they got through the two-story-tall helmet prop.
“It was really cool. It did a good job at pumping up the crowd,” Tuch said.
With fans urging the first-year team from the start, defenseman Shea Theodore scored less than four minutes into the game and the goal would hold up as the sole goal of Game 1.
The team started planning the giant helmet prop about 12 weeks ago, said Robert Waroway, who oversees large scale props at Henderson-based Water FX, the company that fabricated the mega-sized Golden Knights helmet. Water FX is known for building many of the water features and pools in the Strip’s casino-hotels and the large props in the Bellagio Conservatory, Waroway said.
A 10-person crew worked, sometimes on weekends and OT, to prepare the helmet prop for the playoffs, Waroway said.
To deliver the giant helmet to the ice in a timely manner, new motors were replaced in the arena ceiling so that the helmet could be delivered in 45 seconds instead of the seven minutes it would have taken with the original motors, he pointed out.
Here’s how detail-oriented the Golden Knights entertainment and music staff is when it came to playing the accompanying intro music that was combined with the lowering of the giant prop. The team’s music guys typically play John Wick Mode — Le Castlevania when the players hit the ice. But for the dropping of the helmet prop, they looped the opening section and gave it a filter to invoke a more creepy/scary feeling and sound to the musical intro. That’s what I call details.
And storage of the helmet prop is also a snap.
“The helmet lives permanently in the rafters,” Waroway said.
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The helmet’s lighting design was the handiwork of Sean Guarino of Sexy Lites, Inc., Waroway said.
Water FX is no stranger to the Golden Knights’ venue. The 20-year-old company also built the castle/fortress stage on one side of T-Mobile Arena, where the drummers perform and fan contests are staged.
The giant helmet prop was such a crowd-pleaser that the Golden Knights are working on making a mini helmet replica of the prop to sell. But it “might be more of a next season item,” team Chief Marketing Officer Brian Killingsworth said Thursday.
And get used to one more Golden Knights helmet prop feature that will add more drama to home playoff games. The helmet will have a fog effect working that will make it appear as if the players are hitting the ice through a haze of smoke, Waroway said.
Of course. It’s Vegas, baby.
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