Nevada Hockey Apparel
Four defunct Nevada hockey teams, from the Las Vegas Thunder of the 1990s to Reno's one shot at the pro game, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.
Before the Golden Knights, Las Vegas had the Thunder, and for a few years in the mid-1990s the Thunder were the best-drawing minor league team in the country, filling the Thomas & Mack Center on the strength of a good club and a town that will show up for anything. Reno got a team in the same decade and lost it in three years. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.
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Nevada hockey history
The Thunder. The Las Vegas Thunder joined the International Hockey League in 1993, when the IHL was trying to become a second major league, and Las Vegas was exactly the kind of market it wanted. The Thunder played at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus, drew crowds that led the league, and put a teenaged Radek Bonk on the ice in their first season because the NHL draft rules would not let him play anywhere else yet. They were good, too, with a division title and deep playoff runs in the early years. The end came from the landlord rather than the league: UNLV declined to renew the arena lease, and with nowhere to play the Thunder folded after the 1998–99 season, eighteen years before the NHL arrived.
Roller hockey in the desert. Roller Hockey International tried Las Vegas twice. The Las Vegas Flash played the 1994 summer at the Thomas & Mack, and the Las Vegas Coyotes came along a few seasons later; neither lasted more than a couple of years, which was about par for the league.
Reno. The Reno Rage were the last name of a West Coast Hockey League franchise that had started as the Reno Renegades in 1995, playing at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center. The rebrand came for the 1997–98 season and did not help; the team folded that spring, and Reno has not had a pro team since.
Four teams, one full arena, and the years before the Knights.
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