Vegas Golden Knights Capture First Stanley Cup

Golden Knights games have always been as flashy as any show on the Las Vegas Strip, the sword-fighting mascot taking the ice before what seems like a legion of players marching out through the mirrored entrance into the roar of the crowd. If this team was ever going to win the Stanley Cup, it was going to do it with Vegas flash. The Knights delivered just that from dazzling passes to Mark Stone's hat trick to all-out goal celebrations, capturing the young organization's first title with a 9-3 romp over the beaten up and exhausted Florida Panthers on Tuesday night, the AP reports.

Coach Bruce Cassidy, in a nod to the Knights' brief history, started five of the original Vegas players known as the Misfits and put the sixth on the second shift. Cassidy sounded confident the day before the game that his team would play well, and it certainly did, blowing open a one-goal game in the second period to lead 6-1. The nine goals tied the record for the most in a Cup Final. “Vegas, you certainly know how to throw a party," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told the crowd. “What’s going on inside this arena and outside is incredible and a testament to what a great hockey market this is.”

(More Stanley Cup stories.)