Game One of the Stanley Cup Final had a little bit of everything. And it had a lot of Mark Davis.
The Raiders owner took his trademark hairstyle to rink side in Las Vegas for the first game of the best-of-seven series that will determine the champions of hockey and the new custodians of the Stanley Cup. And Davis isn’t a Johnny-Come-Lately; he attended the team’s regular-season home opener, and he has supported the franchise throughout its inaugural season.
Davis will soon be taking his own team to Las Vegas, and he has to be inspired by the support that the hockey team enjoys, with a standing-room-only crowd in the arena and thousands more outside. If the folks in Vegas will do that for a brand-new hockey team, they’ll likely do the same for one of the most iconic brands in football.
For a city that was excluded from big-time sports for decades due to gambling, the emergence of the Golden Knights combined with the looming arrival of the Raiders and the likely installation of Vegas as a key component of the Super Bowl rotation will make Vegas a major player in the American sports landscape, surely inviting speculation that an MLB and/or NBA team eventually could end up there.
