Chance, Mascot for The Vegas Golden Knights

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The Vegas Golden Knights pulled the greatest Friday the 13th prank in their franchise’s nascent existence a couple weeks ago. Except it wasn’t actually a prank. The Golden Knights decided to introduce their new mascot to the world (presented by Geico!, for some reason) via their crazy-popular twitter handle, but failed to supply any more details on the fantastic beast for another hour and forty minutes. Needless to say, the immediate consensus reaction was…confusion. What is it? Why does look like the rock guy from Fantastic Four? Is it a dinosaur? Is it a golden Godzilla? Following a thorough investigation of the internet, I’m confident that not a single fan theory correctly identified Chance as the GILA MONSTER he is.

Truthfully, when I heard he was a gila monster, I had a tough time understanding how the franchise had missed such an easy gimme and failed to just make their mascot a knight, but I’ve since changed my mind. After all, who says a mascot has to have any sort of semblance to the team they represent? Certainly not the Phillie Phanatic, and don’t even get me started on the Montreal Canadiens and their offensively ginger Youppi!

Youppi! the offensively ginger mascot of the Montreal Canadiens

Source: http://www.espn.co.uk/mlb/story/_/id/14700530/how-youppi-canadiens-keep-expos-spirit-alive-montreal

At the end of the day, I think Bill Foley and the Golden Knights’ media marketing group deserve a little credit for having the balls (and creativity) to green-light the use of a venomous, hardly-known, and near-threatened lizard as the face of their franchise. That being said, I feel like they missed a real opportunity to truly embrace the weirdness of their decision and go all out with a lizard costume; let’s be honest – that mascot outfit (designed by VStar Entertainment Group) is nothing more than a head and a set of gloves (yes, he wears hockey pants). That leads me to my only real criticism of the costume – the fact that the back of Chance’s head looks to be inexplicably coated with a thick shimmering and sparkling layer of unicorn spit.

Chance the Vegas Golden Knights Mascot is really just a head and gloves

Source: Getty Images, http://www.gettyimages.ie/license/862591050

The last element to all of this that deserves to be touched on is the fact that the mascot is named Chance. If you can’t work out that name’s obviously brilliant double entendre and how it relates to back to Vegas, I’m afraid I can’t help you. There is, of course, the possibility that the naming was all purely a setup for the best-ever mascot Halloween costume:

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