Are Washingtonians really ready for some hockey? Or is this about something else?

They are loving some hockey in Las Vegas.

And why not? The expansion Golden Knights just vanquished the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference semifinals. They’ll play the winner of Thursday’s Winnipeg-Nashville game for the right to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals.

It’s an amazing story almost without comparison. Las Vegas is just the third team in NHL history to win multiple series in its first season. The Toronto Arenas won the Stanley Cup in the first postseason in league history in 1918 and St. Louis won two rounds to win the all-expansion West Division in 1968.

The temptation is to think Seattle/Washington will embrace the NHL like Las Vegas has. The favorable expansion draft that allowed the Golden Knights to succeed will be used for Seattle, once the lead-pipe bid for a team is finalized by the NHL.

After all, area fans went ga-ga when given the opportunity to put down season-ticket deposits for a hypothetical team. You would have thought they were snatching up free Bitcoins.

“There’s a buzz,” Marilyn Strickland, the former Tacoma mayor turned Seattle Chamber of Commerce President and CEO told The USA Today recently.

“When you say, ‘25,000 season-ticket deposits (sold) in one hour,’ people talk about that. There’s a civic pride and an enthusiasm. ... People may not necessarily be hardcore fans of the sport, but they want to be caught up in the event.”

I hope so. But I’m afraid, despite the buzz about season-ticket deposits for a hypothetical team playing at the renovated Key Arena, that this is more about an arena than hockey.

Follow me here. You get an NHL team, you get a first-class arena. That shiny new (or in this case, somewhat new-ish) arena can also be home to an NBA team, and just like that, the wrongs of the Sonics leaving for Oklahoma City are righted.

This is no conspiracy theory, either.

Oak View Group, which is managing the Key Arena project, is led by CEO Tim Lewieke, who made no bones about what this renovated building can deliver and what the goal is.

“It is a perfect basketball building,” Lewike said recently, one that should entice an NBA team. “I’d argue it’s as good, if not a better, basketball building than a hockey building.”

And therein lies a problem.

Is this about getting the NHL or reanimating the Sonics?

Some would say both, but I would say it’s not that simple.

The issue is can two teams, playing in the same building during the same time, succeed, especially when one of those teams is a hockey team?

Will fans choose hockey over hoops?

The Sonics moved to Oklahoma City before the 2008-09 season and there has been a void in winter sports since.

Hockey is an attempt to fill that void. For some fans, that won’t be enough.

They want basketball. They want the NBA.

I get that. The NBA messed us over. David Stern is a jerk. These are facts that most any sane person would agree on.

But it’s crazy to keep pining away for the NBA. I’m sure there are some hoops-crazed fans out there who are bummed the sad-sack Sacramento Kings didn’t move up here five years ago this month.

Again, I get it. The Sonics were the area’s first pro franchise, creating a legion of basketball fans. Having the NBA leave was painful, and nothing short of getting another team will ever do.

But this is supposed to be about hockey. And can an NHL team truly survive – and thrive – if it has to compete with the Sonics?

The Seattle area supported NBA in the past, and the basketball tradition in the state runs deep. Hockey? Sure, there’s the Metropolitans winning the Stanley Cup in 1917, but that feels closer to an urban myth than reality. Since then there’s been a lot of junior hockey and some semi-pro, but no NHL.

Las Vegas had a similar hockey backstory. But it’s not Seattle with sun and slot machines.

The Golden Knights are Las Vegas’ Sonics: Their first pro franchise, and they’ve played their home games in front of an average of 18,042 fans (103.9 percent of capacity). The Oakland Raiders are coming (allegedly) in 2020, the same year the puck is supposed to drop for an NHL team in Key Arena. By then, the Golden Knights will have had plenty of opportunity to capture the hearts of Las Vegas fans.

Seattle is a bigger city and already has the Seahawks, the Mariners, the Sounders and the Huskies.

Add in an NHL team and an NBA team and that’s a pretty full slate of sports.

Can it work? Are there enough fans, and more importantly, money in the region to support all of those teams?

It appears to be a bet that is about to be made.

This story was originally published May 8, 2018 at 2:45 PM with the headline "Are Washingtonians really ready for some hockey? Or is this about something else?."