Vegas Golden Knights Change Players On Ice and Employees Off It
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By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Less than two months ago, the Vegas Golden Knights shipped popular players Marc-Andre Fleury to Chicago and Ryan Reaves to New York.
They say it’s only “business” — the business of jettisoning players to dump salaries so that the NHL’s 32 clubs can comply with a team salary cap of $81.5 million.
And off the ice and behind the scenes, the Golden Knights have also seen other employees leave the team that enters its fifth season.
On the team’s business side, the VGK lost its top marketing staffer — former Chief Marketing Officer Brian Killingsworth, who left in early August. Killingsworth said it was his decision to leave after overseeing and crafting the VGK’s marketing operations that literally spanned the globe with the VGK Worldwide fan club program to fan favorites like the flying Fleury Superman save figurine to the Thanksgiving holiday gift rollouts.
The Knights have not announced Killingsworth’s successor. It should be noted that team President Kerry Bubolz, Chief Sales Officer Jim Frevola and Chief Ticketing Officer Todd Pollock are original VGKers.
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The Golden Knights lost two faces who are familiar to VGK fans. Stormy Buonantony left her rinkside reporter job for VGK TV broadcast rights holder AT&T SportsNet and is the lead host for the national betting program called, “My Guys in the Desert,” on VSIN.
The Knights also did not bring back TV broadcast analyst Mike McKenna, who relayed the news two months ago via Twitter:
Alyssa Girardi, VGK senior manager of communications and content, also left in June.
After the Knights in-game entertainment chief Jonny Greco left for Madison Square Garden in 2019 before taking the entertainment chief job for the new Seattle Kraken expansion team in 2020, Ayron Sequeira was the Golden Knights’ entertainment experience head until she left the VGK this year to re-join Greco in Seattle as the Kraken’s senior director of entertainment production.
Also on the VGK entertainment side, former arena emcee Wayne “Big D” Danielson left the Golden Knights games at T-Mobile arena in June 2020 for a country music radio job in Nashville, Tennessee.
On the foundation side, Tim Mullin, director of strategic partnerships, left in January 2020 after more than 2 1/2 years with the VGK.
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Golden Knights owner Bill Foley is expanding his operations and has created the Foley Entertainment Group to oversee a new American Hockey League team, the Henderson Silver Knights; a new community hockey facility, Lifeguard Arena, in downtown Henderson; a new Indoor Football League franchise, Vegas Knight Hawks; and a new 6,000-seat arena in Henderson called Dollar Loan Center that opens in spring 2022.
Bubolz, the VGK president and chief operating officer, will serve as Co-CEO alongside Randy Morton of the Foley Entertainment Group.
The Golden Knights are also looking to fill two business analyst positions. On LinkedIn, these jobs were publicized: full stack developer and CRM and database developer.
The Golden Knights play their first preseason home game Sept. 26 when the VGK hosts the San Jose Sharks.
