Tragedy and triumph: Golden Knights connect with Nevada to numb the pain of the Las Vegas shooting

On Oct. 1, 2017 approximately 22,000 people attended the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Paradise, Nevada. However, the festival was brought to an abrupt end as Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd. 

Paddock fired over 1,000 bullets from his 32nd-floor room in the Mandalay Bay hotel. He killed 58 people and wounded over 700. 

Police rushed to arrest Paddock, but when they entered his suite he was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Since Paddock couldn’t be interrogated, the motive for the mass shooting is undetermined.  

As people mourned the loss of loved ones, a National Hockey League expansion team – the Golden Knights – was introduced to Las Vegas. 

Having no connection to this new NHL team, Nevada clung onto the hope that the Golden Knights would give them a reason to celebrate. And the team did not disappoint. 

On Oct. 10, the Golden Knights played their first game in Las Vegas. Defenseman Derek Engelland gave a 58 second speech – one second for each victim – before the game. 

According to the Review Journal, the speech was “a stirring tribute delivered with the names of the victims emblazoned on the ice and each Knights player having escorted a first responder onto the rink, those from police and fire and medical and other emergency services recognized for their heroism in the aftermath of the shootings.”

Following this touching pregame ceremony, the Golden Knights won their first home game of the season and became the first NHL expansion team to win three straight games. 

From this point forward, the Golden Knights were no longer just a new team – they were Las Vegas’ pride and joy. 

The team ended the season with an impressive 51-24-7 record, handily winning the Pacific Division. 

With their strong record, the Golden Knights advanced to the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs and took on the Los Angeles Kings in the first round. Vegas won 4-0. 

Their next opponents – the San Jose Sharks – pushed the series to six games, but the Golden Knights were still able to win 4-2 and advance to the Western Conference Finals. 

Here, Vegas took on the Winnipeg Jets. After losing the first game 0-1, it didn’t look good for the Golden Knights. But the team was able to rally together and win the next four games to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals. 

The perfect ending for Vegas’ inspirational season would have been the Stanley Cup, but the Golden Knights fell short of this accomplishment. They were defeated by the Washington Capitals in game five of the series. 

Their season was nothing short of a success, though. The team made NHL history by making it to the Stanley Cup their first year –– something only one other team, the Florida Panthers in 2023, has ever done. 

More importantly though, the Golden Knights also helped Las Vegas heal from a tragedy. 

To this day, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting is the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in American history. It left many people scared, mournful and hopeless. But the Golden Knights helped to turn this around. 

While the team didn’t end the season the way they wanted to, their achievement was remarkable. 

In an interview with the Review Journal, Vegas Golden Knights coach Gerald Gallant said, “we always go back to our first home game.”

“It wasn’t about our team winning, it wasn’t about nothing — it was about the first responders and the tragedy that happened the week before. It was a tough way to start our season, but I think the guys and everybody supported it well. They all came out and played an unbelievable game that first night and I just think it carried over [to the rest of the season].”

In just a few months, the Golden Knights transitioned from the newest NHL team to Nevada’s favorite team. 

As Brad Creel – a long-time Las Vegas resident and huge hockey fan – told The New York Times, “the team wrapped themselves around the town, and the town wrapped themselves around the team.”