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

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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.”

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