Las Vegas’ Jason Zucker back with Minnesota Wild

Our hometown Las Vegas boy Jason Zucker just resigned with the Minnesota Wild, as expected.

Reports are that Zucker signed a 2-year, $4mil extension to continue playing with the Wild which originally drafted him in 2010.

It is something to keep in mind as NHL Las Vegas continues to unroll towards a 2017-2018 entrance. All signings from now until the 2017 Expansion Draft is going to have an impact on what talent pool will be available for the Las Vegas franchise to look at.

Zucker is a good, quality Left Wing, but has had some injuries he has had to work through, and this last season was definitely a down year for the 24-year-old, scoring 13 goals and 26 points in 51 games. The extension provides a bridge for the Wild and Zucker. He was due to become a Restricted (Group 2) free agent on Friday but his stock had fallen due to his injury-hampered season. The Wild get a two year commitment from a solid winger with skills while Zucker has a chance to get his career back on track before he hits unrestricted free agency.

But for Las Vegas, it is something to keep an eye on. There is a new coach in Minnesota, Bruce Boudreau, and you never know how a player might or might not mesh in a new system. Zucker might well recover and get back to the level that suggests he could be a 30-goal scorer or better.

Or he could continue to struggle, and might come available in the Expansion Draft, and an interesting hometown pickup for Las Vegas to gamble on.

Official: Las Vegas is Home to the NHL.

After 2.5 years of what sometimes seemed to be an endless process, the NHL awarded an NHL franchise to Bill Foley and Las Vegas.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
                                                                          Winston Churchill

But even though it has been a hard slogging battle, the work goes into overdrive. Bill Foley may need to clone himself a few times just to keep up.

Just a few of the items that need to be done fast:

• The team's practice facility needs to be ready to go by 2017 - just over 12 months away, and the plans for it are still unsettled. They need to be finalized and construction started toot sweet.
• One of the most important moves needs to be a General Manager hired and hitting the ground running. The GM needs to be experienced and with a strong personality, because that person will be going a long way in establishing the culture of the franchise.
• The Front Office needs to be filled out. 
• Community marketing and sales needs to pop into overdrive.
• A strong scouting department needs to start developing a data base keying into two key 2017 events - the 2017 Expansion Draft and the 2017 Entry Draft which will come up bang-bang right after each other. 

Okay, maybe we are not even at the End of the Beginning, as old Winston Churchill once said. Maybe we are simply in the middle of the Prologue.

If a Las Vegas Entry Draft Happened Now

Everyone is still breathlessly waiting for the expected Wednesday announcement which (hopefully) finalizes Las Vegas receiving the next NHL Franchise.

And at the very real danger of squirling the future, the buzz is humming at an intense level over what will the first Las Vegas team looks like, assuming it actually does get off the ground for the 2017-2018 season.

Just for fun, our buddies over at ESPN threw out what the draft might look like if it happened today:

http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/16375666/nhl-our-projected-las-vegas-expansion-team-roster

There is a lot of water to flow under the bridge, but there are a lot of interesting things to chew on. I will probably look back on this in a few weeks.

It is fun to dream, but there are going to be a whirlwind of action, assuming that the NHL does give Las Vegas a great announcement on Wednesday. Some of the very first actions the new franchise would need to do - apart from finalizing their name that is - are naming a GM and getting a scouting department installed. The experience and bent of whoever the new GM is plus the expertise and preferences of the scouting clipboards are going to go a ways in establishing which way any Las Vegas NHL team will be looking on how to fill their roster.

The Stanley Cup is coming to the Hard Rock!

The annual NHL Awards will be handed out at a special event at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Not only will the NHL movers and shakers be attending, but the cool hardware will be there too!

Notes are pattering around that most of the major awards will be on display in the Hard Rock prior to the awards ceremony scheduled for 22 June!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/StanleyCup.jpg

These are supposed to be headlined by the Stanley Cup, but also other major awards such as the Hart Trophy (Most Valuable Player), Norris Trophy (Best Defenseman) and the Mark Messier Leadership Award.

SInce word has it that the official announcement that Las Vegas is receiving the next NHL franchise, it will be a cool place to dream of future glory.

Now all we need is a name and a logo for our still-not-official team to make this complete.

Hockey once was Thunderous in the desert

A great column from Ron Kantowski of the Review-Journal reminds us about the "Cowboy Goalie" Clint Malarchuk.

Clint is a character and played for the old Las Vegas Thunder in the old International Hockey League.

But remembering those old days Clint talks about when ice hockey in the 1990s was the in sport: Tuesday games typically had 5,000-6,000 fans a night, with more than 10,000 fans on weekends. This for a minor league hockey team playing in a facility unsuited for hockey.

You can read the complete article here.

NHL Hockey in the Las Vegas desert. Really? A host of "experts" have pooh-poohed the idea.

Yet here we are. Rumors are swirling and the word on the street are that the NHL council of high muckity mucks will okay the Las Vegas franchise so long as Bill Foley and his fellow hustlers the Maloof brothers will pony up a $500 million franchise fee for the rights.

Uff da!

Outsiders don't get it... in Las Vegas, a million here, a  million there and before long you might start talking about some real money!

MGM and friends just finished dishing out $375 million to build the T-Mobile Arena. MGM also just announced they will be spending $450 million to turn the 20-year-old Monte Carlo into the Park MGM.

The next hottest thing in the desert - the NHL - looks to be on the way!