By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
Here we are on March 31, the final home game of the season, and the Vegas Golden Knights ended the home schedule the same way they began it Oct. 10 — with an emotional pre-game Oct. 1 ceremony and an electric win before an emotionally-charged packed crowd at T-Mobile Arena.
In doing so, the historic rookie NHL club clinched the Pacific Division against second-place San Jose with a 3-2 win over the Sharks with an SportsCenter Top 10 highlight-reel, short-handed, between-the-legs goal by that man, William Karlsson.
He talks about that goal here.
And it was nearly six months ago when this hockey team’s exodus in the desert included these same Sharks playing the Golden Knights Oct. 1 in a preseason match at T-Mobile Arena.
Only two hours after that Oct. 1 exhibition game ended, the deadliest mass shooting in the country staggered Las Vegas when a gunman killed 58 people and injured more than 700 others attending a country music festival on the Strip a mile from the Golden Knights’ home arena.
The slaughter on the Strip framed the Golden Knights’ season, which came full circle tonight when the historic first-year NHL franchise paid tribute to the victims of Oct. 1. The mass shooting gave the team purpose and the team gave Las Vegas a major league sports team to lean on for emotional support.
Forward Alex Tuch puts tonight’s game into perspective.
Before tonight’s SRO crowd of a season-high 18,458, the Golden Knights staged a moving ceremony to honor those victims. You can see the Facebook video of the ceremony here. The number 58 will never be used by the Golden Knights for a player’s number.
Tonight reminded me of the first game (of the season) — Coach Gerard Gallant
It was a love affair between team and hometown from the get-go and it only blossomed even more as the season wore on, with the unveiling of a mascot, the emergence of T-Mobile Arena for VGK games as the hottest place to be seen on the Strip and SRO crowds that now routinely draw more than 18,000 in an ice barn with official capacity of 17,367.
LVSportsBiz.com asked Gallant a few days earlier about the impact of playing in this ice house and here’s what the man called Turk told the media.
Fan Appreciation Week ends today as the Golden Knights hit the road for the final three games of the year.
The Golden Knights games transcended hockey. They were entertainment shows with a NHL game as the centerpiece, but the trimmings were full-force Vegas.
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There was Blue Man Group’s appearance on the Oct. 10 home opener, occasional Cirque du Soleil intermission performances and couple that was engaged and married all in one home game — plus an integrated in-game entertainment package of razor-sharp videos of fans, music powered by a body-vibrating bass and crisp Jumbotron images.
The team name that had no desert or Las Vegas connection and was rooted on the banks of the U.S. Military Academy on the Hudson River 60 miles north of New York City was seamlessly adopted by a fan base that included everyone from hard-core superfans to casual supporters who became hockey converts thanks to the Golden Knights.
LVSportsBiz.com was lucky to have great photographers document fans all year long. Enjoy these photos.
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