The creative mind behind the spirited Golden Knights fan experience

By Justin Emerson

Tuesday, March 9, 2021 | 2 a.m.

She’s been an usher, a producer and even a roller-blading rhinoceros. Ayron Sequeira has done it all when it comes to the part of pro sports that not everyone knows.

Even if Golden Knights fans don’t know her name, they all know her work. Sequeira was the executive director of entertainment experience, or to put it plainly, the one in charge of the in-game entertainment that has helped make the Golden Knights famous.

She announced her departure last week, and was given a tribute by the TV commentators, as well as in the arena during a stoppage in front of the 2,600 fans allowed in the building.

“I was not expecting that because they know I am not a front-of-house person, but I was incredibly touched,” she said. “It was overwhelming and I’m really glad they didn’t show me on camera because I was a mess.”

Sequeira started in sports out of high school and has spent the time since working every show under the sun. She worked in the NHL with the Sharks and Red Wings, and arrived in Las Vegas in 2017 to help launch the Golden Knights and their popular pregame shows and in-game experience.

The Las Vegas Sun caught up with Sequeira to talk about her time with the Golden Knights, what worked and didn’t, her memories of the first playoff run, introducing the Silver Knights and the time she was concerned a large animal would relieve itself on the ice.

Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

When you started with the Golden Knights, what was your plan for the team? It was a brand-new team and you had a blank slate for what you wanted to do. Do you think it’s played out to that vision?

The opportunity to come in, learn about this city and tell this city’s story through our in-arena show was our job. We absolutely adored it. We came in and some of the very first team-building things we did, we went to Cirque shows. We went and saw Carrot Top’s performance. We went to Brad Garrett’s comedy club. We really immersed ourselves in the city and tried to make sure that when you came to a Vegas Golden Knights game, you knew you were in Vegas. And I think we succeeded with that.

I'm sure you've heard the criticisms from outside Las Vegas that the pregame shows were too goofy and that they didn't respect tradition. What's your response to that?

The pregame show and everything that we did in-arena respected our city, respected our fans. That was what it was intended for all along.

We weren't planning a show for Montreal or Detroit or Minnesota, or any other more “traditional” hockey market. We were planning an entertainment experience in the entertainment capital of the world, and that was our directive, to make sure that when you came to a Vegas Golden Knights game you came to a Vegas Golden Knights game. We weren't trying to create anything other than that.

We didn't know what the hockey would be like in Year One, but we knew what we could control, which was the in-arena atmosphere and the in-arena entertainment, so we wanted it to reflect and be competitive, frankly, with everything else that is in Las Vegas that you can spend your ticket money on. And I will forever be incredibly proud of the show and every single element that went into it with thoughtfulness and intention and researched history. We cared quite a bit about getting it right.

A lot of people outside of Vegas thought it was silly but I don't think I've heard a bad word from any Golden Knights fans and I imagine that’s the kind of feedback you are more interested in.

You want it to be fun. People aren't coming to a hockey game, like, they're not doing homework, it's not their job. They're coming to forget about their worries and their cares for three and a half hours. They're coming to hang out with people who are like-minded and they're coming to cheer and make noise and be surrounded by other people who have similar interests. Yes it wasn't traditional, but we're not a traditional market and to my knowledge, there was no pressure from the league to be traditional.

Tell our story, tell Vegas’ story and you be you. When we went into the playoffs Year One, (NHL chief content officer) Steve Mayer and his team were very involved with what we were doing. They knew what we had on-ice, they knew that we were doing projection, they knew everything we were doing. And there was never a moment where they were like, “Oh, guys, come on.” It was always, “Sure. It's your show.”

I think it was during first-year playoff run that people started to not just pay attention to the team but pay attention to the shows that were happening. During that run against the Kings, the Sharks, the Jets and the Capitals, you had a different pregame show for each. Which of those was your personal favorite?

Well, I used to work for the Sharks (laughs), so I've got a long history with California teams.

I loved every bit of every single show because it was always trying something new. Like having the bad guy be flown into the rafters on a suspension wire — like, who does that? Well we did.

At one point we even tried something right before the Final, we tried a gag that failed. That was the other hallmark of our show, and that cannot be understated. (Team president) Kerry (Bubolz) allowed us to try things and he allowed us to be wrong. He allowed us to fail. And when we failed, we pivoted. Sometimes they were visible and sometimes they weren't.

We had this portion of the pregame in which we were literally going to burn banners. They were made out of magician’s paper. And they were hung over the ice and the league was like, “No residue, no residue on the ice,” and we're like, “Yep, yep, no problem.” We didn't think we'd have residue, we did a test run, and it left residue on the ice. And so we didn't use them.

But the time and the money and everything that went into seeing if it would work, we were never in trouble for that. We were encouraged — that's a rare thing to be told to go ahead and try. If it fails, it fails, if it works, it's going to be spectacular. And that freedom, that absolute certainty that your team president supported you, fail or not, was freeing and liberating. Because a lot of times people operate in fear they're afraid to try something and we didn't have to worry about that.

I’ve heard some rumors about what the show might have looked like if playoff matchups had involved different teams coming in, but is there one team that you wish the Golden Knights had played in the playoffs, that you had a plan for?

We have plans, but we have plans upon plans. ... Are you talking about the tiger? 

I was talking about the tiger, yeah.

Editor's Note: The rumor was that if the Golden Knights played the Nashville Predators in the Western Conference Final instead of the Jets in 2018, the pregame show would have involved a live tiger on the ice.

(Laughs)

(Former partner) Jonny (Greco) loves to tell that story. He told it on a blog recently in Seattle and I was like, “Jonny, I'm never going to live that down,” and he's like, “You wanted a live tiger, Ayron.”

Yeah, I know. I mean, at that point Siegfried and Roy were still with us. I thought it would be safe. I didn't see why we couldn't have a tiger. I genuinely was trying to figure out if, say, the shock of the cold on its paws would cause it to release its bladder, like we went down a path and had lots of conversations.

But again, that goes back to just not being afraid to fail, right? You have the most ridiculous conversations and nobody looks sideways at you. They're just like, “Yep, that's an actual worry and concern is if the tiger were to pee on the ice.”

Transitioning to something a little more serious, I know you had a big show planned for the first game, then you pivoted to an emotional tribute to the Oct. 1 shooting victims. Considering that was the first NHL game in Las Vegas history, what was that like leading up to it and scrapping the show, postponing it and starting a new one?

Those nine days were … a lot. They were, and I’m going to get emotional because those nine days, most of us were transplants. I had never even been to Las Vegas until I moved here and I moved here in July — my first day at the Golden Knights was July 3 I think — so that's three months before all of this.

The pivot comes from seeing your city, and being attuned to your city, and being immersed in it, and learning it. What we did felt right. It felt important to acknowledge what had happened for sure. You can't ignore something like that by any means, but the franchise was always going to celebrate bringing a franchise to Las Vegas, that opening inaugural game was always going to be a celebration of Vegas, it was going to be a celebration of hockey in Vegas, being the first pro sports team here. What we did was we just pivoted to celebrate Las Vegas and its resiliency, and to acknowledge that something so momentous as 1 October would never be forgotten.

It’s part of this city's DNA now, certainly for those 58, now 60 families. It was our job, in a sense, to acknowledge that as the team that was here, we were part of this community and part of this family. And that was what that night was about, that, yeah, we're the new kid here in town, but you're our home, and this is way more important.

I think one of the key lines from that night was that normally our players are the heroes in a community, but we flipped it and those first responders and doctors and nurses — they were the heroes. They were the heroes of that night, and so that was what was more important.

You guys definitely nailed it in that regard. I go back and watch that pregame show and it was pretty amazing.

I still haven’t watched it.

Really?

Yeah. I still haven't watched it. I've seen pieces of it, I've seen the photos of it. Obviously, I know what was going on on headset that night and so my view of that night is very different than what fans saw. But that is, personally, I feel like that night was the greatest night of my career. Please don't make this sound like it's my ego, but I feel like that was the most important night of my career.

So moving on to this season, what was it like calling a show in an empty arena for a month and a half?

Different but not really. We've always had a really great relationship with hockey operations with (president of hockey operations) George McPhee and (general manager) Kelly McCrimmon, and they've always been incredibly respectful and supportive of what we do. They believe that the game presentation contributes to an advantage, that's always been our marching order — create home-ice advantage.

And so, we were also producing for Fortress at Home, which is our second-screen experience, so getting the opportunity to bring Katie Marie, Mark (Shunock) the Golden Knight, some of our drummers, to bring our cast in to really create that home-ice atmosphere, and then to push that on to the second screen, it was important organizationally, it was important to create home-ice advantage.

It felt relatively normal to me to call things and to kind of see what was playing and what how I felt in the arena. I think it was a little bit harder sometimes for Mark and Katie Marie, because they don't see that immediacy, which is why having the iPads and looking and seeing the chatter is important. I'll never forget, there's Joel Ireland on our Twitch channels watching from New Zealand.

So they did have feedback and things like that. It was a little peculiar because obviously 18,000 people make such a massive difference and when we started getting fans back in the building, you start to feel their energy and you see their smiles and you're like, “Yep, that's why we're doing it. Yep, that emotion right there.”

So, it's always better with fans, but it didn't feel as peculiar as I thought it would because I was still doing it for fans.

How happy are you with the Silver Knights’ in-game experience at a new arena, considering the fans haven't been there yet?

I love Silver Knights hockey and I know that there are so many things in store for those fans, some this season but more down the road as well. It’s definitely more difficult to start to imagine what you'd be doing for Henderson.

They all (the Silver Knights staff) get it and they have fun, and fundamentally if we're having fun doing what we're doing, then the fans are going to have fun whenever they join us. The town crier is exceptional. I love it so much.

I'm very pleased with Henderson. I truly am. And it was hilarious, when the NHL posted a clip of Herald, and somebody was like, “So strange, but I kind of love it,” and I'm like, “Yep. That is it. That is exactly what it needed to be.”

Was there anything you wanted to do with the Golden Knights but you thought was too minor league hockey and you should save for the Silver Knights?

No. It’s funny because people often have said that some of what we do for VGK is “minor league,” and I've always laughed because I'm like, “No it's not, it's fun.” And so if you're a high-brow hockey purist, you probably think that a lot of what we do for VGK is a little minor league, and that's fine. You're entitled to your opinion, you're entitled to be a fan how you want to be a fan, but we're proud of what we did and how we changed the perception of game presentation.

There's nothing that was over from VGK that we were like, “Oh, finally we get to put this in a show,” because, I mean we've been talking about Henderson Silver Knights for a while. And we've had weekly meetings and it is its own thing. There's definitely crossover, there's definitely staying with the medieval theme, but Henderson has always been its own, and the ideas that we have for Henderson, I honestly cannot think of one that was like, “Oh, we didn't get to do this for VGK.” It’s always been, “Hey, this would be really great for Henderson. Oh, we should try this for Henderson.” So that might happen down the road a little bit, but I really can't think of anything.

Have you made public what's next for you?

I didn't leave for something else, to be honest. So I kind of wanted to take a little bit of a break, but opportunities have arisen, and I'd be silly not to take something.

I can’t say how much I love this town. Honestly it’s been a hell of a run. It’s been so much fun to build this and to see how the city reacted to it. I’m proud. I’m so, so proud to have been a part of this.