LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — It is one thing to win a Stanley Cup. It is another thing for the Vegas Golden Knights to win a Stanley Cup. To tell the story of this championship team, one must go back to the tragic beginning.
1 October brings about a lot of pain. While that pain doesn’t go away after six years, there is gained perspective. Many reading this article know that pain. Many on the 8newsnow.com team know that pain. But those same people also remember hope in the form of a hockey team that laced up that very night.
The night, known to many as the worst of their lives, drew a line between their lives before and after. It was a group of outcasts tossed to the side by their former teams in one expansion draft. They weren’t expected to do much for an area that was still getting introduced to the concept of professional hockey.
What happened next was fairy tale-esque. That group fell three games short but did not fail to impact the city. Las Vegas would not let them forget that.
There are still six members of that team on the 2023 squad. After all these years, one would imagine the feeling would wear off just a bit, but it hasn’t. Bruce Cassidy put five of them on the ice to start this game. It was a moment that sent chills throughout everyone in the building. If you ask any single fan about this team, the 2023 edition, they will find a way to bring it back to that inaugural season. Why is that? There is no more remarkable example of what sports are all about than the Vegas Golden Knights. That is not hyperbole. It’s a fact.
Sports are a getaway. They’re supposed to get people through the tough times—those moments where people look around and possibly wonder how to go on. From a terrible day at work, fans come home, turn on the game, and for that amount of time, everything else fades away. For people who lost loved ones, fathers, mothers, daughters, or sons, an irretrievably traumatic event could fade away if only for a couple of hours. Nothing else can do that.
The Golden Knights were there for a city that didn’t know how to pick up the pieces. For that, the emotion and gratitude was never truly able to be measured until the deciding Game 5 of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final.
Speaking to Jonathan Marchessault before the series started, it was clear how badly he wanted this. Yes, to win a championship, but it was more than that. It was not so much to complete unfinished business but to reward a fan base that stuck with the Knights through more than any fan base or family should go through. Marchessault put it simply; these fans love you for who you are.
It’s a sentiment that doesn’t exist in every city, or with every team. The mutual admiration and love between players and fans is a nice concept on paper, the kind of stuff every organization says that they have. The truth is, they don’t. The Vegas Golden Knights do. That’s what makes them different.
Sports are supposed to be a getaway, a haven. At a time when that thought wasn’t remotely an option, a hockey team handed that getaway over on a golden platter. In life, many are tested in unimaginable ways. What is often omitted from that story is what is done after the test. There’s no greater story of resilience than that of Las Vegas. There is no greater poster child for that than the Vegas Golden Knights.
After six years, the Knights finally wrote the ending to that story. A complex ending that doesn’t take away the pain, but gives it new meaning.
A famous quote says “Grief never ends, but it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, or a lack of faith. Grief is the price of love.” That price was realized Tuesday. The Vegas Golden Knights are Stanley Cup champions at last.