Zac Electrifly

The Tahoe Knight Monsters will begin play in the ECHl for the 2024-25 season. They held an event today in Lake Tahoe to announce their affiliate. At the event they also showed off their new jerseys. Their mascot was also revealed at the event. The Tahoe Knight Monsters will be affiliated with the Vegas Golden Knights of the National Hockey League and the Henderson Silver Knights of the American Hockey League. The Savannah Ghost Pirates were the last ECHL affiliate of the Vegas Golden Knights. They were affiliated from 2022 to 2024. Other former Vegas Golden Knights ECHL affiliates include the Quad City Mallards and Fort Wayne Komets.

What does this affiliation mean? The Tahoe Knight Monsters will receive players from the Vegas Golden Knights and Henderson Silver Knights. All of the Tahoe Knight Monsters players will be in the Vegas Golden Knights system. At this point it is unclear how many players from Vegas or Henderson will end up in Tahoe. Those players will likely get priority on playing time. The goal for the Tahoe Knight Monsters will be to develop players for the Vegas Golden Knights. The goal for majority of the Tahoe Knight Monsters players will be to get on the Henderson Silver Knights or Vegas Golden Knights. Some veteran players will be there to help in the development of the younger players. It is likely that a lot of the players form the 2023-24 Savannah Ghost Pirates will make their way onto the Tahoe Knight Monsters roster. The on ice strategy will likely follow that of the Vegas Golden Knights. The goal in the ECHL is mostly to develop players not win championships. The best scenario for Tahoe would be that Vegas or Henderson does not have a need for a lot of call ups either through injuries, trades or trying to test out different players. The way teams are successful in the ECHL is by having little movement on their roster throughout the season while having solid players signed to ECHL contracts while having on ice success. The Ghost Pirates missed the playoffs with a record of 30-34-7 with 68 points last season. If they were in the Western Conference Mountain Division (like the Tahoe Knight Monsters will be), They would have missed the playoffs by one point. That means that the Tahoe Knight Monsters will likely be a bubble playoff team.

*Photos from U/Desert-Duck post on the subreddit R/ECHL

The Tahoe Monster Knights will have a white jersey, a black jersey, and a gold jersey. The Henderson Silver Knights and Vegas Golden Knights use the same jersey templates. The Tahoe Knight Monsters will use different designs. The jerseys are manufactured by Athletic Knit who supply the jerseys for the entire ECHL. Some specialty jerseys are from OT Sports. All three jerseys have different logos on the front and the shoulders. The gold jersey and white jersey use the same pattern. The gold jersey has the primary logo on the front and the Lake Tahoe logo on the shoulders. The gold jersey has the monster head logo from the primary logo on the front with the monogram shield logo on the shoulders. The black jersey has the eye shield logo on the front with the monster head on the shoulders. It does not look like they will have the Vegas Golden Knights or Henderson Silver Knights on the jerseys. The on ice jerseys may include sponsor or affiliate logos not seen on the fan jerseys. These are solid offering from the Tahoe Knight Monsters. I would have liked to have seen a pattern on the jersey sleeves like what is on the Vegas Golden Knights and Henderson Silver Knights jerseys. I also would have liked to see more creativity with the jerseys. Scales are something that could have been on the jerseys. While the stripe designs are fine, it doesn’t feel unique or like it fits with the Vegas Golden Knights brand. They do look a lot like the Savannah Ghost Pirates jerseys. Down to the black jersey being almost a recorded version of the white Ghost Pirates jersey. I am sure there will be more creative jerseys as specialty jerseys in the future. I do not have any big problems with the jerseys. I think my concept did a better job of linking the Tahoe Monster Knights and Vegas Golden Knights brands.

Check out my post about the Tahoe Knight Monsters logos here.

Check out my Tahoe Knight Monsters concept here.

*my concept from 12/2/23

The last thing the Tahoe Knight Monsters announced today was their mascot. Their mascot will be named Tessie after Tahoe Tessie who is the monster that lives in Lake Tahoe. Tessie is an anthropomorphic lake monster. The design is similar to both the Vegas Golden Knights and Henderson Silver Knights mascots. The Vegas Golden Knights have an anthropomorphic Gila Monster named Chance. The Henderson Silver Knights have an anthropomorphic horse named Lucky. Tessie is also the name of one of the Boston Red Sox Mascots.