Tonight, the Golden Knights of Las Vegas host Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Panthers of Florida, both teams seeking the oldest trophy in professional sports — one first awarded in 1893, 12 years before Las Vegas’s founding, when capitalism and visionaries made the desert bloom.
In the century since its birth, the story of Las Vegas has been the story of America compressed, an optimistic founding followed by Old West-style gangsters and a Gilded Age giving way to the rule of law, stability, and prosperity.
Today, Las Vegas is a destination for businesses, vacationers, and dreamers. Starting with 22 residents at the turn of the last century, it grew to 646,790 by 2021, with the Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise metro area now the ninth fastest-growing in America.
As Las Vegas has boomed, so have those surrounding areas, with MoneyGeek rating Henderson the third safest of America’s large cities in 2023. A rising tide, it seems, lifts all boats, even in the Mojave Desert — a fitting metaphor, since it was the one President Kennedy used for cutting taxes to spur economic growth.
When the NHL awarded Las Vegas an expansion team in 2017, the Golden Knights became the city’s first professional sports franchise, and its players hit the ice hard, reaching the Stanley Cup Finals in their inaugural season.
That success put a scare into bookies, who had set the Golden Knights’ chances of winning the Cup at 500-1 before they dropped their first puck. It could have been “the biggest futures loss in Las Vegas history,” an oddsmaker at SportsBettingExperts, Jim Murphy, told Forbes.
The Golden Knights fell to the Washington Capitals, but their incredible run put the city on the sports map, with the team embraced by locals while out-of-towners circled away games on their teams’ schedule for the chance to visit and take in the Strip.
Las Vegas seemed an odd choice for the NHL’s first new team in 17 years, as they’d have to play “the fastest game on ice” in a place where average high temperatures top 100 degrees for months at a time.
NHL teams in balmy climates such as Phoenix, home to the Arizona Coyotes, and Florida — where the Panthers play outside Miami and the Lightning hit at Tampa Bay — often struggled with slushy ice. Phoenix suffered from apathy among fans, as did steamy Atlanta, which saw two franchises flee to Canada.
Even the Boston Bruins lost faceoffs with the heat, hosting the infamous “fog game” in the 1988 Cup Finals against the Edmonton Oilers. Eighty-degree heat created a thick cloud in the Boston Garden, prompting players to skate in circles in attempts to change the atmosphere.
When a power transformer failed from the strain, the arena went dark, and the game was ruled a tie. If a New England franchise, one of the NHL’s revered Original Six teams, couldn’t make ice for a critical game, there were doubts that the Golden Knights could pull it off all season.
According to the NHL Players Association last month, though, the ice at the Golden Knight’s T-Mobile Arena is considered the best of that on offer from the 25 American teams. Las Vegas also avoided the financial struggles of Atlanta and Phoenix — the Coyotes declared bankruptcy in 2009 and don’t have an arena to play in next season — putting responsibility for failures on ownership, not the weather.
By proving so successful, the Golden Knights have helped lure other clubs to town. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders made the move in 2020, and Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics plan to follow as soon as next season.
The bright light from the Entertainment Capital of the World, like the glow from the Statue of Liberty’s torch, doesn’t stop at the water’s edge, either. In 2021, Money.co.uk named Las Vegas the 10h best city in the world if you’re looking to relocate.
“What happens in Vegas,” the local tourism slogan says, “stays in Vegas,” but there’s no reason some of its success can’t be transplanted elsewhere. Other cities just need to learn to dream big again, and to remember that in America, anything is possible — even hoisting the Stanley Cup in the desert.
