Autograph ban is bad news for grown-up Golden Knights fans
The NHL’s feel-good team of the year, the Vegas Golden Knights, are now under scrutiny for a controversial decision barring adults from autograph sessions.
The NHL’s newest expansion franchise, the Vegas Golden Knights, have not only taken the hockey world by storm, but the entire sports world as well. As a result of their shocking success in their first season, the Golden Knights have been the hot ticket across the city of Las Vegas and the questions as too whether Vegas could ever be a hockey market have been shattered just four months into the franchise’s existence.
However, one result of the Knights newfound popularity has been a plethora of fans clamoring for autographs after every team practice. Vegas’s practices allowed for fans to watch the full session and meet players afterward and ask for autographs. Now, however, these crowds have become a security concern for the Golden Knights.
As a result, the Golden Knights have implemented a new policy that restricts fans over 14 years old from entering a newly designed designated area by the player benches, where fans can ask for autographs. This new policy also forbids fans from loitering in the players’ parking lot to seek autographs after practice.
“Obviously we were having large crowds showing up at our practices, and I just felt like we had to define a better process,” Knights president Kerry Bubolz said Tuesday, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “So we looked to define a better process, and ultimately, that the most people can get autographs that we decided to limit it to kids.”
The age restriction is meant to address older fans “getting out of hand” and the overall unfairness of professional autograph hunters accumulating as many autographs as possible as well as the general safety concerns of massive crowds,
“What I saw, honestly, I saw adults at times pushing kids out of the way, and that’s just not how we’re wired,” Bubolz said, again per the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “On the exterior of the building we had to change that process, too. Guys were stopping, as they always do, and it was creating a safety hazard. We saw kids running into the street and we just couldn’t have an incident like that take place so we had to change that process as well.”
It’s unclear how they plan to enforce this new rule, and while something had to be changed before somebody got hurt, this doesn’t make the decision set in stone. The Golden Knights are still only fourth months into their existence, everything — on or off the ice — will be a learning experience for the franchise. Being overwhelmed by how popular the franchise has become so quickly is far from the worst problem for the franchise to have.
“I agree, the team needed to do something,” said season ticket holder Luc Roy, speaking to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I was out there a couple of times with the cars and it was insane. The players need some privacy and if I were a player, I’d want to be able to go home.”
“But I wish they would have done it differently,” Roy continued. “My biggest concern is parents are using their kids to get autographs and then selling them. If an adult has 20 items and each has everyone’s autograph, how is that possible?”
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The Vegas Golden Knights currently sit atop the Pacific division and second place in the NHL overall with a record of 32-11-4 for 68 points, however, Vegas has a game in hand on the league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning, giving them 1.447 points per game compared to Tampa Bay’s 1.438. The Golden Knights next and final game before the All-Star break is Thursday night at home against the New York Islanders, who bested Vegas 6-3 on Oct. 30 in Brooklyn.