Tahoe Knight Monsters

18

No no no no no no. This is just wrong.

First of all, the proper name was staring this team right in the face. This is the ECHL affiliate of the NHL Vegas Golden Knights and the AHL Henderson Silver Knights. The team should be called the Bronze Knights, end of story. It probably shouldn't even be as far away as Lake Tahoe; it should probably be in the same (non-)city that the Golden Knights and Silver Knights play in (which, for the record, is neither Las Vegas nor Henderson...go read the review for the Henderson Silver Knights if you want all the details). But even if the team isn't going to be in the Vegas area, it should still be called the Bronze Knights.

But okay, maybe the owners (the Tahoe team, unlike the Silver Knights, is not owned by the Golden Knights) didn't want to do the obvious thing. And there are other good ways to name a team that's the ECHL affiliate of the Golden Knights and Silver Knights, right? There must be. But you sure wouldn't know it from this team, because Knight Monsters is a very stupid name.

First of all, it's nonsensical. What the hell is a knight monster? A monster of some sort, obviously, but what kind? A monster that is also a knight? That makes no sense. Can you imagine a monster riding a horse in a jousting tournament? Hell, how do you even fit a monster with a suit of armor? How is the king supposed to do that sword-on-the-shoulder thing when the monster doesn't have shoulders? And aren't knights supposed to be noble-born? There are logistical issues that just make this unlikely.

Maybe it's a monster who exclusively fights knights. Again, this seems unlikely. Isn't the reason knights fight monsters usually to save some damsel in distress? (I never quite understood what the damsels were doing to get captured by the monsters, but then again they only existed in these stories for the purpose of being in distress and getting saved by a knight, so maybe the stories never really explained that. Maybe they just walked up to the monster and said, "Excuse me, Mr. Monster, I'm a damsel and I was sent here to put myself in distress so a knight could save me. Could you be so kind as to capture me so the knight can come by and kill you to rescue me?" And the monster said, "Growl!" because that's all monsters can say, but what they meant is "Sure, that sounds great!" because let's face it, monsters in these stories aren't renowned for being smart.) So these monsters aren't really knight monsters, they're damsel monsters. But Damsel Monsters isn't any less confusing than Knight Monsters, and also paints the team as a bunch of guys who do bad things to women, which is a very negative light to paint the players in.

Another problem with that meaning of Knight Monsters is that it means the team is named after the thing its parent team stands in opposition to. That seems like it typically wouldn't work. You wouldn't call the Ducks' affiliate the Hunters. You wouldn't call the Oilers' affiliate the Environmentalists. You wouldn't call the Coyotes' affiliate the— oh, yeah, someone did call the Coyotes' affiliate the Roadrunners. But you know what happened next: the Coyotes failed in Phoenix and are now playing in Salt Lake City, and they don't even have a proper nickname at the moment. This is why you don't do shit like this. The Knight Monsters are endangering the Silver Knights, maybe even the Golden Knights.

And that's doubly bad because where would the Golden Knights relocate to if they had to?

Phoenix?

Final Score: 18 points.
Penalties: Region, 3 pts; Compound, 13 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts.
Bonuses: None.