Well, it turns out that the National Hockey League expansion team helmed by William Foley, the chairman of Fidelity National Financial and Black Knight Financial Services, won’t share a name with one of Foley’s companies after all.
Early speculation about the name of the new Las Vegas-based NHL team focused on the name “Black Knights,” given Foley’s preference for the name as he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, which calls its sports teams the “Black Knights” as well.
“I love Black Knights,” Foley said in June when asked about the team’s name. “I’m an Army guy, but maybe that’s not the right name for this team at this time,” Foley said, adding that there are some “alternatives” and other name options that will be reviewed with the league before an official announcement is made.
But now, it looks like Foley’s team won’t be the Black Knights. Instead, it appears that the team will be names either the Desert Hawks, the Red Hawks or the Nighthawks.
That information comes courtesy of Sportslogos.net, which reports that those three names were all registered as several different domain names by Black Knight IP Holding Company, a company owned by Foley.
Earlier this week, Foley told Sportsbook Radio that Black Knights is out as an option for the team name due to various factors, including some pushback from the U.S. Military Academy.
“It’s not Black Knights,” Foley told Sportsbook Radio, as captured and recapped by Sports Illustrated. “That’s been vetted, and there were too many objections from my alma mater [West Point] and then [we got] some push-back from some other people, so we’ve put that one aside. But the name is going to have … Knights somewhere in some fashion, some way. Or, there’s one particular animal, a bird, that we have available to us that we might use.”
According to a separate Yahoo report, it looks like Foley may not be able to have Knights in the team name after all.
From Yahoo:
Recently (Foley) said he hoped some sort of variation of “Knights” could be used in the team name, but couldn’t just use “Knights” because of the CHL’s London Knights.
“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. “In the U.S., ‘Knights’ are fine. But we can’t use it in Canada.”
So, it looks like the mortgage business won’t have a familiar name adorning the jerseys of the NHL’s new team in 2017. Unless Foley totally changes course and goes with the Las Vegas Fidelity Nationals, that is. Eh, doesn’t have the same ring to it.
