Las Vegas has arrived on the NHL scene.
Over this past week, the newest member of the NHL family, the Vegas Golden Knights, have surprised all fans of hockey by winning their first three games of the season, which is something no other expansion team in the history of the league has done.
Through three games, the team has scored nine goals and allowed only four. James Neal, a pickup in the Expansion Draft from Nashville, has scored five of those goals, including the game winners in all three games.
The city itself, in the wake of unexplainable tragedy last week, has embraced the Knights as a way to regain some normalcy after 58 lives were lost and countless others injured in the devastating shooting on October 1. I know that the power of sports in response to tragedy may be overstated but it does work. People want to return to some sense of normalcy and sports are able to provide an escape for that to happen.
Whatever happens for the Golden Knights the rest of this season, they sure made a good first impression on fans and maybe, just maybe, prove that hockey can become popular in Vegas. We will wait and see.