By Alan Snel
LVSportsBiz.com
We chatted 1-on-1 with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman Wednesday, with the commissioner saying the league was looking at expanding instant replay reviews even without the controversial five-minute major penalty against the Vegas Golden Knights that led to the Knights losing Game 7 in the postseason’s first round against the San Jose Sharks.
Bettman chatted after the NHL Board of Governors meeting at Encore where the board approved SLS Las Vegas owner Alex Meruello as the lead owner of the Arizona Coyotes. Bettman said Meruello will try and close the Coyotes purchase deal in July. Bettman said the National Hockey League wasn’t necessarily trying to be the first major sports team league in the Las Vegas market.
But Bettman said the league is glad it expanded to Las Vegas and praised the franchise for running a top-notch operation. And he acknowledged the Maloof brothers visited him to lobby for Las Vegas as a NHL market. Here’s our interview with Bettman before the awards show at Mandalay Bay Events Center.
Before the awards show, Bettman strolled along a red carpet with a wide variety of NHL players, coaches and celebrities like Mr. Jeopardy/Las Vegas resident/sports gamer James Holzhauer, who noted the Golden Knights have more analytical data than he does for his sports betting.
Holzhauer also said Jeopardy’s lawyers told him to cool it on blending the Golden Knights logo (and the Chicago Bears logo) into his name that was scrawled on his station on the TV game show. Holzhauer was known for his “Go Knights Go” sayings on the show.
Bettman noted he does hear the boos — but that’s OK, he said, because all the team league commissioners gets booed and it’s a sign of relevance. Bettman also said that Meruelo’s business history was thoroughly checked out by the NHL (and by Nevada gaming officials too) and his owning of a hotel-casino and an NHL team in Arizona will not be a problem. Meruelo wants to work on the Coyotes’ arena issues, Bettman said.
The Golden Knights dominated the awards show in 2018, but this year only VGK forward Mark Stone was strolling the red carpet. It seems the Golden Knights-themed lining inside Stone’s suit was a popular topic, so he showed it off.
The NHL Awards Show has become a regular post-Stanley Cup playoffs event for Las Vegas, which is a host for the awards show under a multi-year deal with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). About 6,000 hockey fans were in the house.
There was a top NHL gamer — or a video game player — named Top Shelf Cookie; the bearded Sharks defenseman Brent Burns in a military camouflage suit; and Islanders coach Barry Trotz who returned to Las Vegas where he won the Stanley Cup as the coach of the Washington Capitals, which defeated the Knights for the NHL title in 2018.
Trotz said he enjoyed a practice ritual of skating a lap around the ice to pump up his team.
Trotz won the coach of the year — here’s his post-award photo.
The awards show gave a chance for Golden Knights fans suffering hockey withdrawal to full the Mandalay Bay Events Center, which will be broken down immediately after the event to make way for a WNBA Las Vegas Aces game Thursday.
Saturday Night Live actor Kenan Thompson did a superb job hosting the awards show, goofing on everyone from game show host Steve Harvey to playing a made scientist explaining the buffet of NHL awards that were being handed out. Thompson said he attends about five NHL Rangers games a year in New York.
A highlight came at the end when Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, fighting pancreatic cancer, presented the MVP award after he received a standing ovation.
The awards hanging out in the hallway at Mandalay Bay Events Center.
*
Follow LVSportsBiz.com on Twitter and Instagram and like LVSportsBiz.com on Facebook.