Color of Hockey: Golden Knights, Kings, Stars seek title of 'Mexico's Team'

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles efforts by the Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings and Dallas Stars to expand their brands and grow hockey in Mexico.

METEPEC, Mexico -- Diego de la Garma said it was unimaginable a decade ago.

NHL teams taking the time and energy to come to Mexico to help coach young players and try to turn residents of this soccer- and baseball-obsessed nation into hockey fans?

“No way,” said de la Garma, technical director of the Mexico Ice Hockey Federation and coach of its men’s and women’s national teams. “We dreamed about it, talked about it, but being able to see it as a reality?”

De la Garma said he’s now living the dream with three NHL teams -- the Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings and Dallas Stars -- active in Mexico, each seeking to grow its fan base south of the border and become “Mexico’s Team.”

“We thought about this for a long time, and it’s finally happening,” he said. “NHL teams are saying, ‘Oh, we can do something in Mexico.’ It’s a dream come true for everybody involved in hockey in Mexico.”

The Golden Knights made their first visit to Mexico over the weekend. It sent a contingent of 15 to conduct ice and ball hockey clinics at fanfest at Winter Sports Center Metepec, about an hour's drive west of of Mexico City.

The “LosVGK en Mexico” tour hosted a fanfest at the rink on Sunday. Hundreds came to see Golden Knights mascot Chance, members of the Viva Vegas cheerleading squad, the Knights Guard ice-cleaning crew and meet Jesus Lopez, the team's Spanish language play-by-play broadcaster.

The tour concludes in Monterrey on Tuesday, where it will conduct a ball hockey clinic and open skate at Ice Complex Monterrey for children from Fundacion Dr. Sonrisas, a foundation that supports children affected by life-threatening health conditions.

The tour was the idea of Benjamin Thomas, a Las Vegas native who lived in Mexico City and is Vegas' director for Latino marketing and outreach.

“It’s one of the main pillars of the LosVGK mission ... we want to grow the sport of hockey,” he said. “When I start thinking about, ‘Hey, we’re growing the game in Latin America,' this was such an obvious step we should take as an organization.”

The Golden Knights are following the Kings and Stars into Mexico. Los Angeles made its first visit in 2018 and has conducted clinics and camps, dispatching former players like Derek Armstrong, Mike Weaver and Blake Bolden, a Kings scout and inclusion specialist, to Mexico City.

The Kings expanded their foothold in the city when they established a partnership with Ice World Santa Fe, a rink in a Mexico City shopping mall.

“The Ice World Santa Fe hockey program already existed before we got there and it was coincidentally called ‘Kings,’ which was great," said Francisco X. Rivera, a team consultant who is also Los Angeles' Spanish language play-by-play broadcaster. “It was a great fit. It’s not that we had to start from scratch, but we had to sort of enhance what they were doing already and just work on fine-tuning things here and there.”

The Stars also decided to go into Mexico in 2018. They’ve done Learn to Play clinics and other sessions with instructors and retired NHL players like Bob Bassen and Al Montoya, the Stars’ director of community outreach who was the first Cuban American player in the NHL when he debuted as a goalie for the Phoenix Coyotes against the Colorado Avalanche on April 1, 2009.

Lucas Reid, Dallas' director of amateur hockey & partnership development, said the team was drawn to Mexico, in part, by the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys.

“We want to be inclusive in our efforts to reach out to fans,” Reid said. “Through that effort, the last five, six years we thought it was important to also extend our reach into Mexico, more specifically, Mexico City, where our partners ... in the city here, the Dallas Cowboys, have kind of laid out the carpet and showed the path on what kind of fandom you can get in being purposeful with your outreach efforts.

“We’ve been down there five, six times now and everywhere we go you see Dallas Cowboys, whether its signage, football fields, pass by places in Mexico City and they have ‘Dallas Cowboys’ written all over them, you see people wearing Dallas Cowboys merch,” Reid said. “Our goal is to be that for our sport in Mexico and Mexico City.”

Mexico is no stranger to hockey; a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation since April 1985, the country of more than 129 million people has 14 indoor and one outdoor ice rink, according to IIHF figures. A new indoor rink recently opened in Cancun.

Mexico’s women’s national team is ranked 25th in the world by the IIHF and its men’s team is ranked 42nd. The women’s team will play in a 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics pre-qualification tournament in December in a pool that includes Poland and South Korea.

“The Mexican market, we have a lot of rinks, a lot of people that love hockey,” de la Garma said. “Obviously, a lot of people that live in the States are either Mexicans or with Mexican heritage. I think it’s a huge market that the NHL can explore and make it a popular sport in Latin American countries.”

The Stars and Kings are among the teams that have expressed an interest in having an NHL game played in Mexico City.

“If there was a preseason game or any type of exhibition game, we would certainly want to be in that conversation,” Golden Knights chief marketing officer Eric Tosi said.

Reid said the Stars are exploring having a rink built in Mexico City; the team owns and operates eight ice facilities in the metropolitan Dallas area.

“Our plan is to continue to do Learn to Plays, be resourceful in getting gear down there, introducing our development coaches to their marketplace,” Reid said. “... our next step is we really want to try to get a deal done and build a facility down there.

“I think we’re ready to take that next step beyond grassroots programming.”