A jazz combo set up near where the goalie’s crease used to be at Orleans Arena was playing background music Friday night as the latest inductees to the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame, their guests and hundreds of well-wishers mingled and reminisced of past athletic feats.
It would have been cool had somebody cued the old chainsaw sound effect.
Darcy “Chainsaw” Loewen was in the house, and so were some of his old coaches and teammates representing the Las Vegas Thunder, who were enshrined as a unit. Long before there were Golden Knights, there was Thunder, and it rumbled across the plain chasing the puck with a fury and a gusto that made one’s spine tingle, and the dasher boards quiver.