“Knight” may have fallen early on the NHL’s newest franchise.

The Vegas Golden Knights, who unveiled their name at a highly stylized press event, had their application for a trademark on the moniker denied this week by the US Patent and Trademark Office, which determined the name is too similar to Albany-based The College of Saint Rose Golden Knights.

“Marks may be confusingly similar in appearance, where similar terms or phrases or similar parts of terms or phrases appear in the compared marks and create a similar overall commercial impression,” the patent office said in a jargon- and legalese-filled statement.

In plain English, it means this logo:

Is too close to this logo:

You can be the judge of whether the public actually would confuse the 31st NHL franchise with the Division II athletics program, but the US government seems to think so.

The Vegas hockey team has indicated it will appeal the decision – likely in hopes of saving itself the embarrassment and expense of replacing all the merchandise that already has been produced.

“We are currently reviewing the Trademark Office’s letter and will prepare a detailed response demonstrating why we continue strongly to believe the Vegas Golden Knights mark should be registered in co-existence with the college registration, just as a number of other nicknames currently co-exist in professional and college sports,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said Thursday in a statement. “We consider this a routine matter and it is not our intention to reconsider the name or logo of this franchise.”

But the team also could choose to move on from a name no one seemed to like that much to begin with, perhaps reverting to the much more popular original suggestion: the Las Vegas Place Holder Vegas Hockey.

It just rolls off the tongue, and best of all, the odds of a D-II college having claim to the name are pretty slim.