Henderson Silver Knights

12

The Vegas Golden Knights and Henderson Silver Knights, it turns out, actually play in the same town. No, the Silver Knights don't actually play in Las Vegas. Nor do the Golden Knights play in Henderson. And, as you've probably guessed already, that means the Vegas Golden Knights don't play in Las Vegas and the Henderson Silver Knights don't play in Henderson. As it turns out, both of them play in a town called Paradise which sits between the two.

Paradise could reasonably be described as the most popular tourist destination no one's ever heard of. Most of the Las Vegas Strip, it turns out, is in Paradise rather than Las Vegas proper. The Bellagio, Caesar's Palace, MGM Grand? None of them are in Las Vegas; they're all in Paradise. Same for the Venetian and Mandalay Bay. Indeed, these casinos are basically the reason Paradise exists. They were built outside Las Vegas proper to avoid having to pay city taxes. Then the City of Las Vegas decided to increase its tax base by annexing the Strip. The casinos responded by getting the county commissioners to create an unincorporated town, which would prevent the city from being able to annex the area. This may sound horribly corrupt to you. If you sit back and think about it, though, then you realize there's only one reason you think that, which is...um, that it really was hopelessly corrupt.

Anyway, in addition to most of the things you think are in Vegas, Paradise is home to T-Mobile Arena, where the Golden Knights play, and Orleans Arena, where the Silver Knights play. It's easy to see why the Golden Knights use the locative "Vegas": Las Vegas is the name of the metropolitan area, and the largest city in the metropolitan area. The Silver Knights using "Henderson", on the other hand, makes no sense. They're not in Henderson. Henderson isn't the largest city in the metropolitan area. The arena is closer to Las Vegas than to Henderson (and, for what it's worth, is closer to Las Vegas than T-Mobile Arena is). Using Henderson as the locative is completely dishonest. Then again, it's not exactly like anyone expects a lot of honesty in this town.

In any case, calling the team the "Silver Knights" is perfect. The idea of silver as second fiddle to gold is well established. And of course, Nevada is the Silver State, not the Gold State. The logo also works well, with an obvious nod to the parent team's logo without being too derivative. I'm not really impressed by the Golden Knights name, but the Silver Knights name is great.

Is there a third arena in Paradise? They could put their ECHL team there. Call them the Bronze Knights. All they'd have to do is find another nearby city to name them after. After all, calling them the Paradise Bronze Knights would make way too much sense.

Final Score: 12 points.
Penalties: Region, 3 pts; Compound, 13 pts.
Bonuses: Cool-Name, -4 pts.