Unless they have been there all their lives, an 18-year old in Las Vegas can be a rare sight.
Sin City doesn’t usually appear on a “To-Do List” until 21 or so for obvious reasons.
You can still enjoy yourself. When a place averages four inches of rain per year and is home to the X-Scream at the Stratosphere Tower, age should never be an issue.
Throw in an opportunity to impress a future employer who is picking up all expenses and has the ability to make your lifelong dream come true and you have something pretty incredible.
The Vegas Golden Knights put 44 players, including their first class of draft picks through the experience of a Vegas-style development camp.
Londoner Nick Suzuki couldn’t help but be front and centre. He was the second of three Golden Knights’ first round picks in the 2017 NHL Entry draft, going 13th overall.
“You see the hotels in pictures and in movies,” Suzuki says, “But it’s a lot different seeing them in person.”
Given that the players were there to show their stuff on the ice, they didn’t spend an awful lot of time in the 40-degree heat, but did get to walk the Las Vegas Strip, which in itself can be a bit of a fitness test.
Every NHL team will take a handful of days or even a week following the draft to go through an orientation camp or development camp of some sort just to introduce players to the organization. Most teams have it down to a science by now.
For the Golden Knights, this was brand new and that added a really unique element to this particular camp, making it nothing like the other 30.
In any other NHL city, the team is already entrenched. The last expansion teams to join the league were Columbus and Minnesota in 1998. No one asks the questions they used to about where the name “Blue Jackets” comes from. (It actually traces back to the fact that a large number of the Union army’s blue coats from the American Civil War were made in Columbus.)
No one seems to wonder much about what Minnesota’s logo is supposed to be, either. (It is a Minnesota landscape that includes “The Star of the North” inside the outline of a wild animal.)
Anyone who wanted to know has already asked and has found out. Those teams are about to celebrate their 20th anniversaries.
Everything to do with the Vegas Golden Knights is brand new, and Suzuki says people are noticing.
“Even in our hotel, people kind of knew we were with the team and they would come up and talk to us. A lot of people seem really excited for it.”
But the players didn’t just sit back and wait for the community to come to them.
“Through a church, we were able to serve the less fortunate,” Suzuki points out. “One (group of players) made the lunch and the other served it. I think there were 800 or 900 people there.”
The Golden Knights’ impact is already being felt and they won’t play their first exhibition game at home until September 19 when they host the Colorado Avalanche.
Most of the players from the development camp know it will be a long shot to be in that game. As a first rounder, the leading goal-scorer on the Owen Sound Attack last year might have an outside shot, but he knows the importance of what he went through for his week in Vegas was not about right now or even months from now.
“You are all going through the same thing. No one knows what to expect. Next year at the same time, I can let the new guys know what is happening.”
For the former Jr. Knight, it was a look at some actual very bright lights. While Suzuki and the other Golden Knights’ hopefuls skated, Queen and Adam Lambert, Ricky Martin, Reba, Brooks & Dunn, the Backstreet Boys and Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey were all there performing, still living out their dreams.
“This has been my dream for awhile,” says Suzuki, “And going through the draft and the development camp has been pretty surreal. I’m just trying to take it in and soak it up because you only get to do this once.”
He may be right about the draft, but chances are, Nick Suzuki is going to get a chance to play Vegas over and over again.
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