Despite the city’s slogan, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay there — and the Golden Knights are taking that to a new level in their partnership with a local tattoo shop during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Revolt Tattoos is making sure that some fans leave Vegas with new artwork, by providing free Golden Knights-themed ink outside of T-Mobile Arena during home playoff games. Shop owner Joey Hamilton says the partnership started during the Golden Knights’ postseason run following their inaugural season of 2017-18.
“[Golden Knights’ executives] asked us that first year: ‘Do you guys want to tattoo some logos? It’s never been done.’ And we’re like, yeah, let’s do it. So we teamed up with them and did it,” Hamilton told ESPN.
Since then, he’s become a fixture at Toshiba Plaza during Golden Knights home playoff games.
Along with two other artists, Hamilton arrives around five hours prior to game time and it doesn’t take long for a line to form. He estimated that they tattooed about 35 to 40 fans per day when Vegas hosted the Winnipeg Jets to open their first-round series. The trio works until halfway through the first period, which could end up being four hours. They have had to turn people away.
“I’d like to see if we could expand and maybe do it a little bit bigger one year,” Hamilton said. “I feel like we could do hundreds easily, if we had the manpower.”
Hamilton, who won season three of the reality competition show “Ink Master,” which airs on Paramount+, has tattooed a handful of people in the Golden Knights organization, including former players Maxime Lagacé and Deryk Engelland. Vegas right winger Keegan Kolesar also frequents the shop. Revolt Tattoos’ other NHL clients include Alex Tuch, Cody Eakin and James Neal.
“We’ve tattooed all kinds of people, but I feel like the hockey players are super down to earth and they respect what we’re doing and they’re just cool guys,” he said.
The tattoo shop has been in business for eight years and has two locations outside of Nevada in Salt Lake City and Houston.
“I feel like we could do this with Houston too at some point, and maybe even the [Las Vegas] Raiders.”
While the artists at Revolt Tattoos have their sights set on expanding their partnership to other teams in the future, they are focused on supporting the Golden Knights in the postseason.
“We’re really glad that they allow us to be the tattoo shop doing it,” Hamilton said. “There’s 300-plus tattoo shops out here, so they could pick anybody. But, we’ve done a good job with them and maybe one day we’ll be the official tattoo shop for the Golden Knights.”
