When the NHL officially decided on Las Vegas as home for its next expansion franchise, many in the NHL snobbery elite were upset. They whined about hockey in the desert and about how the city wasn’t ready or deserving of pro sports. With those concerns null and void as Vegas Golden Knights head into Game 2 of the Stanley Final Saturday, salty sore loser fans from around the league have found a new point of emphasis to whine about: the Knights’ pregame show.
Since on-ice player performance is hard to criticize, TV ratings and attendance records are being shattered every game, and the tin foil hat-wearing, NOFX-fan conspiracy theorists barking Alex Jones-style about the NHL “fixing” the season so Vegas can win can finally be filed away as nutbags, there’s not much more to complain about. Well, almost.
In a city built on over-the-top theatrical productions that make Broadway look like community theatre, you’d be a moron to think it wouldn’t be anything other than a giant production. We have Cirque du Soleil, Penn & Teller, Elton John, Absinthe, David Copperfield, Criss Angel and hundreds of other world-famous performing acts. We have at least five music festivals calling Vegas home.
Nobody does it like Vegas does.
What do you have, Detroit? Insane Clown Posse. Chicago? R-Kelly. Boston? Well, um, Boston. Toronto and Montreal? Well, you’re Canadian so I guess reruns of SCTV. Only New Yorkers have any right to whine about the pregame show, but — if our counterparts in The Empire State do complain — it’s more than likely jealousy Vegas puts on better Broadway productions at The Smith Center than Broadway does itself.
In the words of “The Interview” actor Randall Park as Kim Jong-un: They hate us, cause they ain’t us.” Check out some of these venomous rants regarding our hometown theatrics.
The Stanley Cup pregame in Vegas is absurd and embarrassing for the NHL.
They had violins playing. Violins before a hockey game! This disgrace needs to end immediately.
— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) May 31, 2018
Some even like to lump it in with the conspiracy theory the NHL loaded the dice for Vegas so the Knights would win, or the revisionist take that this team of unwanted, disposable misfits was somehow actually coveted by their own teams before they threw them out like yesterday’s trash a year ago in the expansion draft, and — because of the theatrics — Tom Wilson’s thuggery is somehow acceptable because of a swordfight on ice.
3 Things #StanleyCup Edition—
1) The NHL obviously "rigged the system" for Vegas.
2) Vegas is not some heart-warming story about a bunch of castoffs. Get out of here with that shit.
3) I almost want to cheer for Tom Wilson because of Vegas' stupid pregame "show".— Harry Yeprem Jr. (@HarryFromCBus) May 31, 2018
With hot takes like that, I guess it’s pretty obvious why Mr. Yeprem currently lists himself on his Twitter handle as a “non-employed sports personality.” His words, not mine. While whiny sore losers take to social media, in between naps and recess, many people understand the beauty in making the pregame festivities in the mold of the “Vegas Style.”
It's really bizarre to me the amount of enough-already about the #VGK pregame show. It is the best thing I have ever seen in an NHL rink. Yes, it's over the top. We're in Las Vegas. The whole town is over the top, right? It fits perfectly. That's the point. #StanleyCup
— Mike Harrington (@ByMHarrington) May 31, 2018
Yes, the Golden Knights' pregame show is over the top. So? Every team in the Final the past few years has used gimmicks and on-ice projections. Heaven forbid people have fun at a game.
— Helene Elliott (@helenenothelen) May 31, 2018
Just randomly saw the Vegas Golden Knights insanely cheesy pregame show, which involved flaming arrows and medieval cosplay, and I have a new favorite sports team now
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) May 29, 2018
Hell, with Vegas setting the standard, fans of the next expansion team in Seattle have their sights set on something even more epic. They’re clamoring for Davy Jones to call out The Kraken to feast on opponents. The Kraken? How disrespectful to this time-honored game.
Just wait until Seattle tries to one-up these Vegas pregame intros in a few years with a live Squid-Octopus-Kraken monster thing legitimately trying to eat Alex Ovechkin.
— Tim Booth (@ByTimBooth) May 29, 2018
Even scholars are weighing in on the historical accuracy of this epic pregame spectacle. Ohio University medievalism professor Kevin Uhalde weighed in during an interview with Slate’s Rebecca Onion in this recent interview.
“There’s nothing strange or new about it, in and of itself, and I like the extra-messy medievalism where people are mixing up different stuff — really mixing up their own notion of what is medieval,” he said. “There are at least two different kinds of medievalism going on in this one. The most obvious one is the chivalry — which is, when I teach anywhere from 50–100 students a course in medieval history in film and literature, chivalry is what everyone says medievalism is.”
Just don’t understand the vitriol directed towards a pregame intro that isn’t much more over-the-top than Nashville’s pregame. I mean, it could be worse. It could be the ridiculously terrible 2018 All-Star Game introduction with Kevin Hart.
However you feel, it’ll be interesting to see Washington try to top the standard the Golden Knights and T-Mobile Arena has set. Hard to top something so epic in produced in the newest and most technologically advanced arena in all of pro sports. Who knows? Maybe they’ll have Donald Trump bungee down from the rafters while Nancy Pelosi does a chicken dance to a song sung by one of the countless congressional songbirds in DC. I’m sure they’re holding tryouts as we speak…
