The Golden Knights are trying to heal the wounds of Las Vegas

Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images / Agene France-Presse
The opening match in the face of the Coyotes in Arizona should be a great party as the only Vegas knows how to organize.

Las Vegas — hockey fans have arrived on the Las Vegas Strip with a beautiful afternoon in the desert, gathering in groups, happy to be outside of the arena.

Several wore the vest flamboyant Golden Knights Vegas, the team expansion of the national hockey League (NHL) who played his first game at home on Tuesday. But no one thought that in hockey, even if the evening would have had to allow Las Vegas to celebrate the arrival of its first team in the major leagues across all sports.

Less than two kilometres to the south, along the Strip, 58 people were massacred and hundreds more injured there are only nine days. The Golden Knights and the NHL have therefore rather chosen to place the tragedy in the foreground, doing their best to provide temporary comfort to a city in sore and bruised.

“I wasn’t going to miss that, said Joan Simmons, a woman from Las Vegas. I think it’s time we all need hockey. “

The opening match in the face of the Coyotes in Arizona should be a great party as the only Vegas knows how to organize. But after the shooting, the franchise has revised its intentions and has chosen to devote an evening more sober victims, first responders and survivors.

After the presentation before the match a moving video featuring the city and its heroes, the Golden Knights were presented to the crowd and each player was accompanied by a representative of law enforcement or first responders.

The names of the victims have then been projected on the ice, while shatter 58 seconds a painful silence. The bands of the T-Mobile Arena had been left bare of their advertisements for the first game. The white panels were rather all the same message : “Vegas Strong “.