I Went To A Vegas Golden Knights Game Last Week And Their Pregame Theatrics Were Enchanting

This past weekend I dabbled in a lovely city depicted in movies such as The Hangover and the aptly named Last Vegas. Yup, we’re talking Las Vegas! A wonderful little town chock full of bars, casinos, clubs, sports books, strip joints, and streets named after old Italian guys. It really is impossible to stress how underrated weird it is that the nightlife capital of the world is just one long street plopped down in the middle of a desert in Southern Nevada. Weird, indeed.

As pretty much everyone is aware of, there’s a brand new featured act in Vegas, the Golden Knights! It’s the city’s first professional sports team and they play right smack down in the middle of the strip, so going to a game was imperative as I’m a fan of hockey and even bigger fan of sports stadiums/arenas. Stadium architecture is fucking captivating and T-Mobile Arena definitely lived up to the hype. It was pretty similar to the Barclays Center except for the fact that it was way more spacious and the bevy of pregame bars outside were to DIE for. Every joint was on a cobblestone road too which adds at least 5 points to the ambiance scale.

After spending a couple hours outside talking to seemingly millions of Jets fans and about 3 Golden Knights fans, it was time to venture inside. The only thing I had known about their in-game experience was Chance the Gambling Mascot

so I was going in pretty cold turkey. Little did I know, Chance wound up being a small appetizer to the pregame theatrics at Golden Knights games.

As I did my inaugural scan around T-Mobile Arena I noticed a castle up near the ceiling behind the home net. Why was it there? Was it Chance’s humble abode? Was there a Dilly Dilly-esque feast going on up there? Despite not knowing its purpose straight from the get-go it seemed like that would be the center of the party for the night, but Gee Willikers was I wrong as the only festivities up in the Castle was only an occasional drum line. That drum line did fuck though.

The big show transpired on the ice just mere moments before puck drop.

Spoilers of the Golden Knights pregame show ahead:

It was so superior to anything else I’ve ever seen at a sporting event. Someone dressed as a poor man’s Sith Lord hastily skated out of the tunnel hoisting a Jets flag to begin a journey to center ice. He was immediately accompanied by a plethora of boos from the Vegas faithful. After about a 4 hours waiting for this guy to arrive at center ice he was met with a sword stuck in a rock. Pretty reminiscent of the ‘ole tale of Excalibur. Next thing I knew there was someone else in his vicinity more or less dressed as a Lannister Soldier, but he was no Lannister. He was a Golden Knight and he made his attempt to get the sword out of the rock. Did it with UTTER EASE and the crowd went wild. The Golden Knights were basically up 1-0 before the puck even dropped.

And this is just another piece of proof as to why Vegas is a city full of deals. You can get steak dinners at the Golden Nugget for like $2.50 and a 2 for the price of 1 hockey game & medieval play combo. Whats’s better than that? More teams need to take note.

All in all, Vegas was a great time. I lost a bunch of money, saw some things my brain will never be able to comprehend, and made the best bet of my life. #LocksOnly