Golden Knights games have always been as flashy as any show on the Las Vegas Strip, the sword-fighting mascot taking the ice before what seems like a legion of players marching out through the mirrored entrance into the roar of the crowd.
The Las Vegas Golden Knights won their first-ever Stanley Cup on Tuesday night, capturing the young organization's first title with a 9-3 romp over the beaten up and exhausted Florida Panthers on Tuesday night.
Vegas closed out the series in five games to win the cup before a delirious franchise-record crowd of 19,058 at T-Mobile Arena that drowned out the pregame introductions of forward Jonathan Marchessault and goalie Adin Hill and cheered all the way through the final buzzer.
The Knights have set the standard of what an expansion franchise should look like, making the Cup Final in their first season and the playoffs in every year but one. Six players remain from the initial 2017-18 team that lost in five games to the Washington Capitals in the final.
Those players watched the Capitals skate with the Stanley Cup that night, and then they got the chance to do the same Tuesday to fulfill owner Bill Foley’s quest to win the championship in the sixth year.
"You can't even begin to explain this. To hear them start this out of nowhere and say in 6 years we're going to have and cup and then in six years we have a cup, it is epic," commented local resident and Golden Knights fan Russ Cook.
Cook and many others celebrated the win together, cheering the moment that the game ended and the Knights won the championship, and singing along with the Elvis Presley classic "Viva Las Vegas."
