Hockey.

            It’s a foreign idea to most people down here in New Orleans.  Outside of a few distant memories of the New Orleans Brass, many of us don’t know much about the sport.  I used to be as perplexed as anyone.  I didn’t know the rules.  I didn’t understand why they would fight, but I enjoyed and encouraged it.  I was confused when one team would be allowed to play with more guys on the ice than the other.  And why the Hell would they take the goalie out?  That just felt like a pure lack of common sense.  Hockey truly baffled me for most of my life.

            However, in the Summer of 2017, I made the decision that I was going to finally be a hockey fan.  I was going to pick a team, and I was going to ride with them from that point on.  At the time, I had two friends that were true hockey fans.  One was a Colorado Avalanche fan.  The other, one of my best friends, a Pittsburgh Penguins fan.  I had no interest in being an Avs fan, so that was off the table.  But the idea of being a Penguins fan and having a buddy that I could enjoy games with and would guide me along my journey towards real hockey fandom was an intriguing one.  At the end of the day, however, the Penguins were an extremely successful franchise with recent Stanley Cup victories, and I didn’t want to seem like a bandwagon fan.  So, I thanked my pal for the insight and continued my search.

            Eventually, I narrowed my options down to two teams, the Florida Panthers (which today is now ironic) and the Vegas Golden Knights.  Anyone who knows me knows I love everything Miami.  I was already a die-hard Hurricanes and Marlins fan, so jumping on board with the Ice Cats made all the sense in the world.  They weren’t a good team.  They had no prior Stanley Cups.  That was what I wanted in my team.  I wanted to feel like I could say I was getting in on the ground floor.  No one would be able to call me a bandwagon fan. The Florida Panthers, at first glance, felt like the obvious choice. 

But then there was the Vegas Golden Knights.

            That season, 2017, would be the inaugural season for the Golden Knights as the NHL’s newest expansion team.  A brand-new team with no history at all full of players drafted away from other teams.  The Knights gave me, a brand-new hockey fan, the unique opportunity to say I was fan from day one.  Literally, day number one.  That was all I needed to make my decision.  To this day, I hear stories from my Grandparents about how they were around when New Orleans was given the Saints and how they immediately fell in love.  This was my chance to be able to tell those same stories to my children. 

             Now, to be completely transparent, I had no idea how this experience was going to play out.  Was I going to even enjoy watching this game? Would I even make it through one season?  Again, I had no prior knowledge of hockey.  I knew I wasn’t going to understand what was going on in the beginning, besides that I knew the puck had to go in the net more than it did for the opponent.  On top of all of that, I had chosen to be a fan of an expansion team.  Surely, this team of castoffs and Misfits would be awful in their first few seasons.  How could someone like me get into a new sport while watching a bad team over and over again? 

No one could have prepared me for what would happen next, because no one, and I mean NO ONE, saw it coming.

            The Vegas Golden Knights were good.  This team of castoffs that would later be coined the “Golden Misfits” was GOOD from day one.  As the season went on, I began to watch more and more games.  The more games I watched, the more I started to understand and appreciate the game. 

            Fast forward six months to April 2018.  The Golden Knights, in their first season, had won their division and made the playoffs.  It was incredible, and I enjoyed every minute of it.  However, to stay transparent, I wasn’t fully invested yet.  It was a cool story, but it had to end soon.  That was the logical way to think.  Wrong again.

            The Knights would go on a magical, unbelievable, and unprecedented run to the Stanley Cup Finals in their first year.  In the short span from April to May, they reeled me in.  Hook, line, and sinker.  Not only did I fall in love with this team and its players, but I also fell in love with hockey.  This was my sport now.  I still didn’t understand the rules.  I couldn’t name 10 players outside of my own team.  But I knew I loved watching this game, and I loved this team.  It was the ultimate underdog story of players no one wanted coming together to accomplish something only seen in the most outlandish of Hollywood scripts.  The Knights would ultimately fall three games short of winning the Stanley Cup, but it didn’t matter.  This was my team.  These were my players.  This was my sport, and I would be back next season and every season afterwards. 

            Fast forward again six years.  To this point, the Golden Knights had been to three Western Conference Finals, one Stanley Cup appearance, and made the playoffs four out of five seasons.  Year five was a rough one littered with injuries and trades that the Knights just couldn’t overcome, and they would miss the playoffs.  Going into year six, many people were writing them off before the season even started. Experts were saying the controversial trade they made for “locker room cancer” Jack Eichel wouldn’t pay off, and that we would be the team “most likely to disappoint.”  Sticking with the theme of this story, they were wrong. 

            The Golden Knights would overcome an endless amount of adversity throughout this sixth season.  Jack Eichel would miss time with injury.  The Captain Mark Stone would go through a back surgery that some thought he wouldn’t come back from.  They would lose their All-Star goalie for the season.  Then they would lose another goalie for the season putting all the pressure on third string goalie Adin Hill to carry the team the rest of the way.  But they overcame every obstacle in their path and captured the number one seed in the Western Conference.

            Throughout the playoffs, Jack Eichel became the superstar on the ice and in the locker room that Vegas thought he could be.  Mark Stone was back to being the expressive Captain this team needed.  Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, who considered retirement before the season because of complications with daughter’s health, took hit after hit and bounced right back.  Original Misfit Jonathan Marchessault fittingly was the best player in the playoffs.  And third string goalie Adin hill?  He became a Vegas Legend and one of the best goalies in Stanley Cup Playoff history.  As magical as that first season was, the story was never finished.  The Golden Knights ultimately fell short of the fairy tale ending.  However, that first season wasn’t the end of the story, it was only the beginning. 

            Team owner Bill Foley once said, “Cup in 6,” in reference to how many seasons he thought it should take Vegas to capture it’s first Stanley Cup.  As it turns out, he knew the outcome of the story all along.  This year, in year six, the Vegas Golden Knights conquered the Jets, Oilers, Stars, and Panthers and brought the Stanley Cup home to Vegas. 

            Year one made me fall in love with this team and this sport, but year six gave me my happiest moment in sports since the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2009.  Six years ago, I never expected to ever get emotional over this foreign sport.  But as the Knights put on one of the most dominant Finals performances in history in game five of the Finals, I sat on my couch with my three-month-old son in my arms smiling from ear to ear.  I couldn’t stop smiling as the clock hit zero and this new group of castoffs and Misfits embraced along the glass.  It took everything in me to hold back tears as Mark Stone lifted the Stanley Cup and then passed it off to the six remaining original Golden Misfits. 

            I told my three-year-old son before he went to bed the night of game five that the Knights might win a big trophy named Stanley.  He replied with, "Daddy, I wanna be a Golden Knights player."  The next day while giving him his bath, he asked me randomly, "Dad, did the Golden Knights win the coffee cup? Remember? The one named Stanley?"  All I could do was laugh, and say, "They sure did buddy."  He's asked me to see a picture of the Stanley Cup every day since.  That was why I picked this team. For moments like that.  Six years later, the fairy tale ending had finally happened, and I was able to witness it while holding one son and tell the other all about it.  That was the dream.

            Hockey fans love the game, but they don’t love the Golden Knights.  They certainly don’t love the fans.  Scroll through Twitter and you’ll see the hate in the replies of every tweet from the team account.  They say we were gifted a winner.  They say we don’t know hockey.  They say we don’t really support our team.  Listen, I’ll be the first to admit I’m still learning about this game, and I’m sure other Golden Knights’ fans are the same way. But that doesn’t mean we don’t love this team and this game.  All you had to do was listen to The Fortress for those 60 minutes.  All you had to do was look at the videos of the THOUSANDS of people singing, “We are the Champions” outside of the arena. 

            You may not love us, but we love our team.  You may never embrace Vegas as a hockey city, but the Golden Knights have embraced this fan base.  You may never give our players the respect they deserve.  You may never embrace us as the best fan base in the NHL, but as Coach Bruce Cassidy said after game five, “We’re in the Club now, and you can’t kick us out.”  So, you may never accept us, but that’s just fine.  Knights in 5, and Cup in 6.  See y'all next year for year seven.

This was true on day one, and it’s true now: WE ARE ALL GOLDEN MISFITS.

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