Not So Fast On Knights, Black, Grey, And Gold; Change Certainly Possible

Remember when it was a foregone conclusion the name of the team would be Black Knights or Knights and the colors were the “non-negotiable” black, grey, and gold? Yeah, we do too, it was yesterday. Well, things have changed a bit.

This is not to say that The Creator has stopped pushing for his dream vision for the name, logo, and colors to come true, but comments like this one from Gord Miller are premature, and at this point, inaccurate.

We’ve had conversations with many in the organization about the team name and the consistent answer has been that the process is a lot more complicated than they ever imagined and The Creator getting his way may not end up happening exactly as he planned.

So here’s the process as we know it. The moment the team was announced Adidas (which owns Reebok) was in contact with the Las Vegas organization. The Creator essentially said, “I want my team to be named the Black Knights, and I want them to wear black, grey, and gold.” The folks at Adidas turned around and began their practice of researching anything and everything about the name, the colors, and the city.

They run market studies to see how well the name will play in Las Vegas. How well will it do in the US, Canada, and internationally. They research everything in relation to colors. From how individual threads will look in jerseys to the color of things like Mt. Charleston, Lake Mead, or the Stratosphere to come up with the absolute perfect color scheme for this city and this team.

All while this is going on, the NHL legal offices are combing over trademarks trying to figure out which names are available and which are not.

The issue we are having is trademark issues and trade name issues that are registered that are registered. So we are working our way through that process with various athletic teams, entities that have a name we are interested. So we are working with the league and Adidas and Reebok and we are working our way through it. Our goal is to have a logo and a team name ASAP but we’ve got to do it properly we’ve got to do it in conjunction with the league and we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the right trademarking. -The Creator

Problems have apparently risen with names like Black Knights (Army West Point athletics), Knights (a hockey team in London), Aces (minor league baseball in Reno), and many others. It really should come as no surprise as the most recent additions to the NHL were Thrashers, Wild, Blue Jackets, and Predators. Other leagues have added the Pelicans, Whitecaps, and Timbers. And don’t even get me started on minor league team names.

Silver Knights is one they can get, but The Creator doesn’t like it. He said to a group of media after the press conference it just doesn’t have the pizzaz and doesn’t invoke the powerful feel he’s looking for.

As for the colors, he also mentioned they may change. I asked, “how drastically? Cause a month ago you seemed dead set on black, grey, and gold.” His response, “we’ll see,” with this look on his face trying to tell me “it’s really not up to me.”

And amazingly enough, it’s really not. The way it works is he’s there to give direction and the apparel company that nets more than $15 billion per year selling things like NHL jerseys will put in the work and spit out something that not only looks great, but that people everywhere will buy.

I’ve been one to criticize how slowly things have been moving since June 22nd when the team was announced, but as I learned more and more about the inner-workings of selecting a name and colors, I have to say, even targeting late September seems ambitious at this point.

In the end, the name may well end up being Knights, or even Black Knights. They may indeed wear black, grey, and gold, even though they’ll probably be called Valley View Black, Vegas Strip Grey, and Spring Mountain Gold. But this is one where it’s simply not The Creator wants, The Creator gets.

Well we had a lot of names in mind but a lot of the names I really liked are trademarked so that’s a bit of an issue. I’m happy to take any suggestions anyone has for a name, particularly one that’s not already trademarked. That would be terrific because we are really having a problem with trademarks and trade names.  -The Creator

So yeah, they were asking us for names at the press conference yesterday, and I think in all honesty, they were serious.

**If you have a new name you would like to recommend, post it in the comments. We’ll collect them all and send them to the team. They may just go with it.**