It looks like ‘Knights’ are out and ‘Hawks’ are in when it comes to Las Vegas’ NHL team name.
According to a sportslogos.net report, there are three names being heavily considered by the NHL expansion team: The Desert Hawks, the Red Hawks and the Nighthawks.
As the article points out, a nighthawk is a bird native to the Nevada area, and is also the name of a fighter jet that has some roots in the area.
According to the report, team owner Bill Foley’s company, Black Knight IP Holding Company LLC, has registered domain names relating to all three options.
An early contender in the name search suggested Foley’s company name could play a large part in the team’s moniker. However, Foley told Sportsbook Radio that, “It’s not Black Knights.”
Foley said there were too many objections and push-backs to ‘Black Knights,’ so they’ve “put that one aside.”
“But the name is going to have … Knights somewhere in some fashion, some way,” Foley said. “Or, there’s one particular animal, a bird, that we have available to us that we might use.”
Last week, Foley explained the difficulty with the use of “Knights,” which is trademarked by the OHL team in London, Ont.
“The London Knights own the name in Canada and to acquire the name from London is not economically feasible,” Foley told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday. “In the U.S., ‘Knights’ are fine. But we can’t use it in Canada.”
It’s expected that the new club, which will ice a team for the 2017-18 season, will have everything finalized around the name and logo by early October.
