The Golden Knights Opened Season 10 Camp With 66 Players and Free Practices Anyone Can Watch

by Ryan Rose

What Happened

On September 16, 2026, the Vegas Golden Knights released their training camp roster and schedule. The number that jumps off the page is 66. That is the total count of players invited to camp, broken into 36 forwards, 23 defensemen, and 7 goaltenders. An NHL team dresses 20 players on a game night. So camp is roughly three teams' worth of people competing for a short list of jobs.

The roster announcement came from general manager Kelly McCrimmon. Opening practices ran Thursday, September 17, at City National Arena in Summerlin. That is the team's year-round practice facility, and the sessions there are free and open to the public. There is no ticket, no reservation, and no charge to sit in the seats and watch.

A camp roster this size always mixes established NHL players with prospects who are trying to make an impression in a few short days. Names like Braeden Bowman, Trevor Connelly and Juho Piiparinen sit in that second group. Most fans will not know them on sight yet. Camp is where a name like that either sticks in your head or does not. Watching in person is the only way to see how a young player handles a drill next to a veteran who has done it a thousand times.

This is season 10 for the franchise, and it is also the first camp under a brand new head coach. Ryan Craig, 44, got his first NHL head coaching job on June 17, three days after Vegas lost Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final to Carolina. So the tone of this camp is different from a normal year. A new coach installs new systems, tries new line combinations, and figures out who can play the way he wants to play. All of that happens on the ice at City National Arena, in front of whoever decides to show up.

The preseason schedule follows quickly. Vegas hosts the Utah Mammoth at T-Mobile Arena on Thursday, September 24, at 7 p.m. Pacific, then hosts the San Jose Sharks at the same building on Saturday, September 26, also at 7 p.m. Pacific. Those are ticketed events on the Strip. The Summerlin practices are the free version of the same thing, minus the crowd and the noise.

One practical note before you make plans. Training camp schedules move. Teams add off-ice days, split squads between rinks, close a session for medical or maintenance reasons, or shift a start time by an hour. Check the Golden Knights' official schedule the morning you plan to go, not a week ahead. A ten minute check saves a wasted drive across the valley.

A group of hockey players running skating drills on an indoor practice rink

Why It Matters to Las Vegas Residents

Free matters. That is the honest headline here. A family of four cannot casually drop a few hundred dollars on a preseason game at T-Mobile Arena, and most families in this valley are not going to. But a Tuesday morning practice in Summerlin costs a tank of gas and a parking spot. That gap is the whole story.

Las Vegas has a reputation problem with its own residents. People who live here often feel like everything fun is priced for tourists. Shows, restaurants, arena events, pool days, all of it carries a visitor markup. City National Arena is one of the few big-league experiences in Clark County that is genuinely built for locals. You park in a normal parking lot, walk in a normal door, and sit in normal seats to watch professional athletes work.

For parents, the value is real and specific. Television flattens hockey. You cannot feel how fast a puck moves or how hard a body check lands through a screen. Sitting twenty rows from the glass at a practice, with no crowd noise and no broadcast cuts, a kid actually understands the speed of the game. Kids who play youth hockey in this valley get something else too. They get to watch professionals do the same drills their own coaches run, which is the kind of thing that sticks with a ten year old for years.

There is a neighborhood angle as well. City National Arena sits in Downtown Summerlin's orbit, off Pavilion Center Drive, surrounded by restaurants, shops, and a walkable stretch that gets busier every year. A free practice pulls people to that side of the valley on a random weekday morning. Some of them eat lunch there. Some of them wander through Downtown Summerlin afterward. That foot traffic is not an accident, and it is part of why the west side keeps drawing retail and dining that used to cluster closer to the Strip.

Traffic and timing are worth planning around too. If you are coming from Henderson or the southeast valley, the 215 west in the morning is manageable but not empty. Give yourself extra time. Parking at City National Arena is free, but on a popular camp day it fills, and you may end up walking a few minutes. None of that is a reason to skip it. It is a reason to leave the house earlier than you think you need to.

There is one more reason this matters, and it is the least obvious one. Clark County has a lot of people who moved here in the last five years and still do not feel connected to the place. A free practice is an easy first step. You do not need to know the roster, buy a jersey, or understand icing to enjoy an hour watching people who are very good at something do that thing up close. Plenty of transplants have told me the first time this valley felt like home was at a local event that had nothing to do with the Strip. This is one of those.

Indoor ice rink with empty spectator seating and players skating on the ice during a training session

Background and History

City National Arena opened in 2017 as the Golden Knights' practice facility, in the same stretch of time the franchise was going from an expansion idea to a real team. It was built with two sheets of ice, public skating, a restaurant, and a pro shop. That last part matters more than it sounds. The building was designed from the start as a community rink that a professional team also happens to use, not a closed training compound with a fence around it.

That decision changed hockey in Southern Nevada. Before 2017, ice time in Clark County was scarce. Youth programs fought over limited sheets at a handful of rinks. When City National Arena opened with public sessions and youth programming attached to an NHL brand, participation jumped. Kids who had never seen a hockey game in person suddenly had a place to learn. That is a slow-building effect, and the valley is now about nine years into it.

The team's on-ice history moved fast in the same window. Vegas reached the Stanley Cup Final in its first season, won the Cup in 2023, and returned to the Final again in 2026 before losing Game 6 to Carolina. That kind of run is not normal for a young franchise. It compressed a generation of fandom into less than a decade, and it turned hockey into something people in this desert city talk about without irony.

Summerlin grew alongside it. The master-planned community was already one of the strongest submarkets in Clark County before the arena arrived, but the practice facility gave that corner of the valley a year-round anchor that is not a casino. Downtown Summerlin, the ballpark, and City National Arena together turned a retail district into something closer to a town center. That is the kind of amenity mix that shows up in how people describe a neighborhood when they are deciding where to live.

Season 10 arrives with a first-time head coach, a camp full of young players, and a roster three months removed from a Final loss. It is a genuinely interesting year to watch closely, and camp is the only part of it that is free.

What Happens Next

The immediate calendar is short. Camp practices continue at City National Arena, and the schedule is posted by the team. Sessions are typically in the morning, often with groups split across the two sheets, and the free public access applies to the on-ice work at that facility. Off-ice days happen. Times shift. Confirm before you drive.

Then the preseason games land back to back. Thursday, September 24, Vegas hosts the Utah Mammoth at T-Mobile Arena at 7 p.m. Pacific. Saturday, September 26, Vegas hosts the San Jose Sharks at the same building at the same time. Preseason games are where coaches test combinations they were only sketching out in practice, so if you watch a camp session first, the games make a lot more sense.

Roster cuts follow. A 66-player camp gets trimmed steadily as the regular season approaches, with players reassigned to Henderson or to junior and European clubs. Some of the young names skating in Summerlin this week will be gone by the first week of October. That is the nature of camp, and it is also why the early sessions are the most interesting ones to attend. The ice is fullest and the competition is rawest at the start.

Across the valley, the Henderson Silver Knights open their own camp Monday, September 21, at noon Pacific at America First Center on Water Street. Those practices are free and open to the public as well. Between the two buildings, Clark County has professional hockey available at no cost on both ends of the valley for a short window this month. That window closes when the regular seasons start.

Watch for the young names as the cuts come. A player who hangs around into the final week of camp is telling you something about how the organization sees him. That is the quiet storyline underneath a 66-player roster, and it plays out over the next two weeks in a building anyone can walk into.

Hockey players practicing under bright arena lights on an indoor rink at night

Ryan's Take

People ask me whether living near City National Arena or T-Mobile Arena is worth paying extra for. Generally, no. Proximity to a rink is not what moves value in Clark County, and I would never tell a buyer to stretch their budget over a few minutes of drive time to a practice facility.

What I will say is that amenities like this one change how a submarket feels, and feel eventually shows up in demand. Summerlin has spent the last decade assembling reasons for people to stay on that side of the valley on a Saturday instead of driving to the Strip. A ballpark, a walkable retail district, a practice rink with an open door, trail systems, and a school picture that families research carefully. No single one of those is decisive. Together they are the reason Summerlin holds value through soft stretches better than a lot of the valley does.

The broader point is the one I keep coming back to. The sports build out in this city did not create a premium on the blocks nearest an arena. It created year-round reasons to live here, jobs that are not tied to conventions, and a sense that this is a real city instead of a service economy with a skyline. That shows up in demand across Henderson, the northwest, and the southwest, not in a line item on a comp sheet. Free practices in Summerlin are a small piece of that, but they are a piece people can actually use this week.

Hockey team gathered together on the ice at center rink during a practice session

What You Can Do

Go watch a practice. City National Arena is at 1550 S. Pavilion Center Dr. in Summerlin. Check the Golden Knights' official training camp schedule the morning you plan to go, because camp times change and some days are off ice only. Arrive early, because the good seats and the close parking go first on busy days. Bring the kids. There is no ticket line and no admission cost.

A few practical tips. Dress for a cold building, even when it is 95 degrees outside. Long sleeves or a light jacket make an hour in the stands a lot more comfortable, especially for young kids. Plan to stay somewhere between forty five minutes and an hour and a half, since a full session runs longer than most kids will sit still. Food and a pro shop are inside the building if you want to make a morning of it, and Downtown Summerlin is a short drive if you want lunch afterward.

If the west side is too far, the Henderson Silver Knights are running free camp practices at America First Center, 222 S. Water St., in the Water Street District. Same idea, different end of the valley, and Water Street has grown into a walkable stretch worth an hour of your time on its own.

If you would rather see a game, the two preseason home dates at T-Mobile Arena are September 24 against the Utah Mammoth and September 26 against the San Jose Sharks, both at 7 p.m. Pacific. Preseason tickets are normally the cheapest of the year, so that is the low-cost way into the arena if watching practice is not enough.

Have questions about how this affects your home or neighborhood? Reach out to Ryan Rose or text/call 702-747-5921 anytime.