[Video] This Week's Slap Shot: Talking About the Vegas Golden Knights
Time for a new show!
Last night, we recorded our second show, "Slap Shot," which will be a weekly here at the site.
Our debut show last week focused on the NHL playoffs and issues associated with the games resuming. That program featured two Canadian guests. WATCH HERE
This week, we're talking about the Vegas Golden Knights with two members of the American hockey media. We also analyzed both conferences as the anticipation builds for playoff hockey.
My two guests were outstanding. Both are Vegas Golden Knights beat writers and dedicated journalists who have insider info and have covered the team since the first game during the inaugural season, three years ago:
Joe Pane
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, in an Italian family, the importance of loyalty and strong family values was instilled in him from an early age. Joe’s loyalty to hockey started when his dad brought him to his first NHL game at Madison Square Garden when he was nine years old. He was a New York Rangers season-ticket holder his entire time in New York City and he played recreationally for the Bricktown, New Jersey, league.
Along with hockey, Joe always had a love for numbers, but three years into an accounting degree, he realized that a life behind a desk wouldn’t satisfy him and he traded his calculator for a gun and a badge. Joe served as a Brooklyn police officer for 16 years until he was injured in the line of duty. After that, he combined his law-enforcement skills with his passion for hockey by providing player security for the New York Rangers during their run to a Stanley Cup win in 1994.
After moving to Vegas, a different form of numbers started calling his name. Reading Lawrence Revere’s Playing Blackjack as a Business launched him on a new career. He won more than $1 million in tournaments and was ranked the number-one blackjack tournament player in the country in 2007-2008. He appeared on the television series “The World Series of Blackjack” in 2004 and the Ultimate Blackjack Tour episode, “Superstars of Poker vs. Superstars of Blackjack,” in 2008.
Joe shared his gambling knowledge on Vegas radio, co-hosting local shows, including three years on “The Mark Hoke Show” on poker, “Be In Action” with Ken Einiger for two years, “Kings vs Queens” with Lupe Soto on poker, and “Vegas Banter” with Mark Hernandez. He also penned a monthly column for Blackjack Insider magazine and one called “House Of Pane” for All In poker magazine.
Through all of this, his love of hockey remained strong. In Joe’s 18 years in Vegas, he was a season-ticket holder for the defunct Las Vegas Wranglers hockey team and still plays in the Men’s League at the Las Vegas Ice Center and various pickup hockey games across the Vegas valley.
Joe is thrilled to see hockey in the desert and to have the opportunity to document the greatest expansion team in sports history.
Joe has also written a book called Vegas Golden Knights "How a first-year expansion team healed Las Vegas and shocked the Hockey world" which chronicles the amazing inaugural season of the Vegas Golden Knights right up to falling 3 games short of the Stanley Cup, Joe has covered the VGK since day 1and writes a column called Knights On Ice for Las Vegas Advisor.com which is published after every VGK game including post-game videos with the players
Eddie Rivkin
Eddie is a 50+ year Red Wing fan suffering through the Dead Wing years and watching them hoist 4 Stanley Cups. He has lived in Las Vegas for 30 years and for the last 3 shared his allegiance between the Red Wings and the Golden Knights, except when they play each other when he roots for the Wings. Eddie was a prolific goal scorer as a Mite in 1971 and scored 5 goals in his very first game. He was hampered by his inability to take a hand off his stick and registered a record number of cross-checking penalties for a 6-year-old. Eddie was so prolific at cross checking that as a Squirt his coach moved him to Defenseman from Center. Eddie continued to play defense for the rest of his years on skates racking up penalties and pulling sweaters over opponent’s heads before punching them. Eddie currently writes for thehockeywriters.com covering all things Vegas Golden Knights. Previously he was a guest columnist on Joe Pane’s column on the Las Vegas Advisor.
Watch the entire program here, which runs about 27 minutes:
Note: If you like the show, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We also welcome your feedback. Send comments directly to me at: nolandalla@gmail.com
__________
