Almost two years ago, June 22nd, 2016 to be exact, there was a lot going on in my life. I was two days from moving into my first dorm at UCF and starting the journey I'm now on. As an avid sports fan, I usually know the big news coming out of any major sports league in the country.
But that week, the NHL's announcement of Las Vegas winning the rights to a new NHL franchise flew over my head.
When I did hear about it, it was minor news to me. My team has always been and always will be the Philadelphia Flyers, the coolest hockey franchise that has ever existed. The news that Sin City gained an NHL team did not really matter. I knew pretty much how the expansion process worked and that most teams are bad for a while, and some more recent expansion teams are still without a Stanley Cup.
In fact, the only intriguing thing about the team was their name being the Knights, and that was only due to me going to UCF that week.
However, in the 22 months that have passed since the announcement, the Las Vegas Knights hockey team has turned into a national phenomenon across hockey and just general sports fans alike.
The Knights have shocked the sports world, starting out hot and catching fire for just about the entire 82-game NHL schedule. They finished 2nd in the Western Conference to the Nashville Predators, who ended up taking home the President's Trophy.
However, their image and impact changed forever after a gunman open-fired and carried out the deadliest shooting in American history.
At that point, their season became a lot more important, and it started with an 8-1-0 run that sparked what turned into an incredible season.
That's why, if you don't have a team, they should be. My Flyers are the brink of being eliminated by the 2-time defending champions, so I could need a new team very soon.
In all honesty, there is nobody else to root for. This year's Golden Knights team is a walking 30 For 30, that will probably be released one day.
For those of you that don't know how the NHL expansion process works, here is a summary: All current teams protect a certain amount of players at each position on their roster, leaving the rest to go to a pool of other NHL players that will be chosen from. The expansion team (in this case Las Vegas) goes through an expansion draft where they get to fill a lot of their roster needs by drafting the unprotected current players away from their team. Then, the new team also participates in that year's Entry Draft.
In essence, the Knights are a team full of players other franchises felt were not vital to the team. Veterans that were said to be past their prime and players other organizations did not see enough value in.
Yet, they have formed one of the best cohesive units in the NHL this season. Their inaugural season is farther ahead than that of any North American franchise in recent memory. Last week, the Golden Knights became the only expansion team to sweep its first playoff series. Series formats are used in the NHL, NBA, and MLB and have all been around to see a plethora of expansion.
What the Knights are doing is not only completely unprecedented, but it has become important. The team is retiring the number 58 in honor of the victims of this past October's tragedy.
The Las Vegas community and its victims have rallied around a team that should have been at the bottom of the standings has inspired and injected new life into a community that needed it most.
An underdog story that has turned into something incredible. If you don't have a team in the playoffs (or yours has been eliminated), you should be rooting for Vegas.
