March Sadness: Golden Knights Struggling As Losses Pile Up and March Madness: UNLV Lady Rebels Play Arizona Saturday

By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com

The Vegas Golden Knights have lost five consecutive games before.

But the latest five-game skid, all on this five-game road trip including a 7-3 loss to Winnipeg tonight, is different. For the first time in its five-year history, the franchise looks shaken.

The Golden Knights’ success on the ice, which has translated into lucrative revenues for the National Hockey League team, has spoiled a fan base that has watched its team play in the postseason in every season of its existence.

But the team is barely hanging on to playoff berth amid only three wins in their last 11 games and four wins in the last 18 games.

The Golden Knights are missing key players Mark Stone, Robin Lehner, Alec Martinez, Reilly Smith and Brayden McNabb to injuries.

With this type of trending, the Knights will likely miss the playoffs.

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March Madness: The UNLV women’s basketball team is an underdog to Arizona in college basketball’s Big Dance. But the Lady Rebels’ appearance in the NCAA national tournament has caught the attention of Las Vegas fans.

The Lady Rebels defeated Colorado State last week to win its berth to the national tourney after also winning the Mountain West regular season title.

The men’s hoops team at UNLV lost to Wyoming in the MW conference quarterfinals and Wyoming ended up losing to Indiana in the First Four Tuesday night of the 68-team men’s Big Dance. Indiana 66 Wyoming 58. Next for Indiana: Saint Mary’s on Thursday.

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VGK owner Bill Foley always has something new cooking in his business portfolio.

While his Knights are struggling on the ice, he has a new indoor football team that is making its debut Friday night at his new arena in Henderson, the Dollar Loan Center venue near The District in Green Valley Ranch.

The Indoor Football League team, called the Vegas Knight hawks even though they’re technically playing in Henderson, released its roster Tuesday. Interesting that three players — Kalen Hicks, Kasey Allison and CJ Jones — are from the Las Vegas area. And three players played at UNLV — Jericho Flowers, Gabe McCoy and Darren Woods.

LVSportsBiz.com will be at the arena to report on that first game.

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PSA

 

 

Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.