Golden Knights beef up business staff with eyes on shaping Las Vegas’ sports future

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

One of the perks John Penhollow has enjoyed of his new leadership position with the Vegas Golden Knights has been the ability to peer down from his office and see hockey running at nearly every hour of the day.   

The 51-year-old Buffalo native who grew up playing and coaching the game marvels at the way the team’s headquarters, City National Arena in Summerlin, stays packed around the clock and draws such a wide range of patrons.  

“The Golden Knights were on the ice earlier today and right now I’m watching a bunch of six, seven-year-olds practice on the same ice in the arena,” Penhollow said in a recent late-afternoon interview. “That’s unbelievable, and it’s like my favorite part of the day, but I don’t know that all of you understand how crazy that is.”

For as far as hockey in Southern Nevada has come in the eight years since the Golden Knights debuted, there’s still so far to go.  

It feels like a transitional year for the original major professional sports franchise to call Las Vegas home. The Golden Knights are entering a new chapter as far as hockey goes with the first season since acquiring superstar two-way winger Mitch Marner to pair with another NHL A-lister locked up long-term in Jack Eichel.

Penhollow’s arrival this summer as the Golden Knights’ new President of Business Operations signaled a similar shift on the business side. Kerry Bubolz had served as the Golden Knights’ President and CEO since before the team even had a roster but concurrently moved into a new civic-affairs and governmental-relations position.

Owner Bill Foley tasked the sports business veteran Penhollow with sharpening the Golden Knights’ approach in all areas and promised, “his impressive record of success with revenue generation and growth aligns with our core mission of, ‘Always Advance. Never Retreat.’”

“There’s great work that’s been done here but now we have a chance to go to the next level,” Penhollow said. “We’re going to really lean in on the areas that maybe haven’t worked as well. We’re going to be honest with each other and say, ‘How do we make it better?’”

Developing more ice rinks stands out as one of the most essential long-term projects he’ll oversee. The jampacked schedule at City National Arena shows demand for ice where youth players can practice and play is outpacing supply.   

Not even the addition of America First Center in Henderson, which opened more than three years after City National in 2020, is enough at this point. There are two rinks apiece at America First and City National, but Penhollow said ideally the Golden Knights would be able to double that total as soon as possible as publicly available spaces.

Meanwhile, the team will aim to construct its own private state-of-the-art headquarters at a new location. Penhollow says finding, “the right space,” is the biggest challenge but preliminary exploration is under way.   

“At the time they designed (City National), it was probably fine for (an NHL team),” Penhollow said. “But the needs of professional athletes now, it’s never been more complicated. We have a chance in the future to design this correctly and put (President of Hockey Operations George McPhee and General Manager Kelly McCrimmon) in a position where not only is this a destination for what the team looks like, but also a facility that’s designed in such a way that a talented player could come here and, because of everything we have in there, it could extend his career."

Penhollow’s vision of a facility boom could help explode more than just male hockey in the valley, and more than just one sport too.

He said the Golden Knights have been in talks with the budding Professional Women’s Hockey League about hosting exhibition games in Las Vegas soon and suspects it would be interested in Las Vegas an expansion market.

But there’s not enough ice right now.

Penhollow also predicts a rise in the national profile of box lacrosse and Las Vegas’ team in the Professional Lacrosse League, the Desert Dogs, already plays at the Foley-owned Lee’s Family Forum in Henderson.

The Golden Knights and Desert Dogs, which are owned by a group that includes Wayne Gretzky, could increase their symmetry with a new headquarters.

Foley has also dipped into soccer in recent years, most notably by purchasing English Premier League side AFC Bournemouth in 2022. There were talks of him luring an MLS team in Las Vegas previously.

They fizzled out, but the dream of Foley brining a more major soccer presence to Las Vegas are still alive.

“Everything I’m describing lends itself well to some form of soccer training and development,” Penhollow said. “Absolutely a facility, you’ve got to have an onfield and off-field. You’ve got to have culinary available. You need weight training available. You need to have all the infrastructure that would be conducive to having soccer academies as they call it elsewhere in the world. This is probably a market that’s ready for that. So, given our ties to Bournemouth and the ties to other soccer entities around the world, I think you should probably assume that will find its way into our project as well.”   

Penhollow’s ambitions may sound lofty, but he’s proven he can deliver at previous spots. Most recently, he worked as the Minnesota Vikings’  executive vice president and chief revenue officer.

While there, he oversaw and helped open the $1 billion U.S. Bank Stadium and the $90 million team headquarters. Both venues are world renowned, and have perennially vaulted the Vikings towards the top of the NFL Player’s Association’s Franchise Report Cards including finishing No. 2 in the last two years.  

“When we opened that venue, we were getting players to commit to the team as free agents that we probably had no business getting at the time,” Penhollow said. “And we ended up getting people applying for jobs that were coming there from great situations but they wanted to be a part of what we were building. I’m seeing that here already.”

Penhollow recently brought on a trio of executives, all of whom he worked with in Minnesota. Scott Kegley is the Golden Knights’ new chief digital officer while Rich Wang steps in as chief operations officer and Bryan Harper arrives as chief marketing officer.

They’re all united by wanting a new challenge, one that’s already established a high bar.

The Golden Knights are no turnaround project considering their rise in both business and hockey over the last eight years is among the most remarkable in sports.

Foley paid a $500 million expansion fee to enter the NHL, but the franchise is now valued at $2.2 billion by Forbes to rank 13^th in the league.

But, for perhaps the first time in franchise history, major changes are on the horizon. The 81-year-old Foley wants to groom his son, Rob Foley, to the point where he’s ready to take over running the team full-time.

Already a staple of the business operations, Rob Foley has taken on a more prominent role under the restructuring where he’s learning under Penhollow.

The Golden Knights’ first act might have been a success story, but Penhollow is determined to make the follow-up an undeniable blockbuster.

“My conversations with Bill are to be an agent of change and get this franchise into a position that’s built for the future, not just like right now,” Penhollow said. “So, I’m not going to be going to all the parties and all that because we’ve got a job to do here. I owe it to Bill to really know everything about this business and the people who are involved and our fans and our stakeholders. My style might be a little different than others but it’s because I really care about what we’re doing here. I feel like we can do it the right way. I can do it the right way.”