Ahead of Raiders coming to Las Vegas, legislator pushing bill to make ice hockey the official sport of Nevada

One snowfall in Las Vegas and this happens. Suddenly legislators want to make a winter sport the official sport of the state. Well, one legislator does. Chair of Assembly Judiciary Steve Yeager.

It makes sense. I mean, who doesn’t look at Nevada and immediately think ice hockey? What with all those frozen over lakes and such. No self respecting Nevadan would be caught dead without their pair of hockey skates.

There is undoubtedly an angle to this. The NHL put the expansion Golden Knights in Las Vegas a couple years ago, giving the state their first professional team. Yeager seems pretty excited about that. Not as excited as he is about donuts — for which is seems to have an unehealthy obsession — but excited enough to make it official.

To do so would be to send a message to the Raiders who are set to move into their new stadium in Vegas in July of next year. Hard to say what that message is exactly, but it’s not exactly a loving embrace.

Far be it from me to say how much of a shot this bill has of going through. This could just be a politician pandering to the professional hockey team that broke the ice on professional sports coming to his state.