The location of the Vegas Golden Knight AHL and ECHL affiliates is probably the next big piece of news on the horizon.
Back in August Murray Craven, joining the SinBin.vegas Podcast, identified Christmas as the target date to unveil the details on the Golden Knights’ minor league affiliations. Craven recently confirmed via email it will more likely come in January, and George McPhee agreed.
But as much as McPhee accomplished this summer, he still has additional off-ice tasks that have yet to be accomplished. He hopes to knock two of these off his list in the weeks just after the New Year, in January. “We’re going to be working on a couple of bigger items for our organization,” McPhee said. “We’ll be trying to get our physician group finalized, and working on an AHL affiliate opportunity.” -Dan Marrazza, VegasGoldenKnights.com
As for the AHL, The Creator mentioned on multiple occasions that the team will be an existing franchise. He also does not plan on owning the AHL franchise, at least for now.
“We’re probably going to affiliate with an AHL that’s owned by a 3rd party. We’ll do a 3-5 year deal. Then we’ll move away from that deal.”
— SinBin.vegas (@SinBinVegas) November 9, 2016
McPhee’s plan isn’t to have many players at the AHL level anyway.
Most of our prospects will still be at the junior and college level, so there’s really no need to fill out an entire team. We’ll have six or eight guys that we can call up if we get banged up. But we’ll share for a couple years and then we’ll hone in on a place and see if we can have our own club. –George McPhee to NHL.com
Binghamton, NY, the former affiliate for the Ottawa Senators recently lost the team to Belleville, Ontario. The owner in Binghamton was quoted after losing the team saying “there will be an AHL team in Binghamton in 17-18.” Craven denied any involvement when we wrote about this in October, but it absolutely remains a possibility either via Vegas using Binghamton or an affiliation swap with another existing team.
Another organization that may make sense based on being under current ownership and not being affiliated is the Fort Wayne Komets (Indiana). They are the only team in either the ECHL or AHL who is currently unaffiliated.
As for the ECHL, Vegas is almost certainly going to jump on board with another team. Reno has been positioning itself recently to be the future home of an ECHL affiliate for Las Vegas, but they will not have anything in place by the time next season rolls around.
That’s all we’ve got. See ya in 2017 AHL/ECHL!
Phisig150
We should bring back the Wranglers and let them play in T Mobile.
Ken Boehlke
I’m very very against having a minor league affiliate in Vegas. You don’t want to give locals another option to spend their sports dollars on.
PhiSig150
16,000 season tickets have been sold for a venue that sits 17 5. So that leaves 1,500 tickets. I wonder how many of those are going to be snatched up by casinos and ticket brokers to lure out of town fans. I’m worried about ticket availability. Hockey is already expensive without factoring in a mark up. It would kind of cool (although obviously not done in any other market) to be able to watch the young guys develop in the same arena that they’ll get called up to one day. I guess I might be able to snag a ticket to one of those Wednesday night Blue Jacket games or there’s always UNLV’s hockey team.
LM Chase
The Golden Knights should have a different and unique approach and definitely hold OPEN & FREE AGENT TRYOUTS for their AHL and ECHL divisions, maybe even NHL. Not all great hockey players are cut from the same cloth or similar backgrounds, by way of college, Canada or playing thru the ranks from childhood. Some have not had the same opportunities for one reason or another and their astonishing talents have gone unnoticed.
There are some mind blowing fantastic players out there who have never been given or had the chance for whatever reason to pursue their dreams on time. Golden Knights give these guys a chance to at least tryout for your affiliate teams! open it up to the die hard dedicated players to have that one chance they never got. Who play hockey and practice every day..week after week, they are out there and they are absolutely something to talk about! Open it up to the players who otherwise never had that chance to make it, the mid 20’s thru early 30’s age group. The experienced, fast and furious players who are just as great or better than out of high school players who never got that break, or opportunity who have many great years ahead of them..
Make it an event, make it happen! You will be astonished at the talent out there that has been blatantly overlooked.