2022 NHL All-Star Game full of Las Vegas flair, flavor

LAS VEGAS -- The 2022 Honda NHL All-Star Game was magical. No, really. It was. Murray the Magician performed illusions and card tricks during timeouts while the best players in hockey performed their own brand of sleight of hand at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday.

This was Las Vegas, the home of over-the-top entertainment and one of the top teams in the NHL since the Vegas Golden Knights joined as an expansion team in 2017-18. The goal was to celebrate a place like no other with an All-Star Game like no other.
After the Metropolitan Division defeated the Central Division 5-3 in the final of the 3-on-3 tournament, the voice of Elvis Presley played as it usually does after Golden Knights games.
"Viva Las Vegas!"
"I just think when you sit back and watch it from a fan perspective, I think the fact that it's in Vegas allows you to take chances and do things that you wouldn't normally do as far as the events and production and things," Golden Knights coach Peter DeBoer said.
"And I thought it was awesome. I think it's the way the game's going, the way we want to market it, the way we want to sell it. I think this is the perfect place to be able to try some of those things that traditional markets don't try."
Where else would the pregame show include a pair of blown-up red dice, showgirls in glittering gold outfits, and Elvis and Sinatra impersonators on skates?
Where else would the arena transform into a nightclub for player intros, with Zedd as the DJ and a light show playing on video screens and the ice itself?
Where else would it not be enough to have a prominent artist perform on a temporary stage on the ice between the semifinals and the final?
Here, the NHL used cables to hang a small stage from the rafters. Dressed in a shiny silver suit, Machine Gun Kelly climbed aboard and rose high above the ice.
Early in the show, he sang as he descended slowly. Later, he sang on the main stage, on the ice and even as he lay on his back on the ice as if he were about to make a snow angel.
"Easy city to sell, right?" Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. "We all know what Vegas brings."
Well, yes. Now, anyway.
Not long ago, there were a lot of misconceptions about Las Vegas as a city and as a potential hockey town. Owner Bill Foley set out to create a franchise that would cater to the locals, not the tourists, and give the city an identity beyond the Strip.

It has been a massive success, with the Golden Knights becoming instant Stanley Cup contenders and T-Mobile Arena becoming one of the most raucous rinks in the NHL, especially in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Turns out, it has the best of both worlds -- locals and tourists, community and Strip.
"The first year, we didn't know if we were going to win 10 games, we didn't know if we were going to have a sold-out barn and all that stuff, and look where we are now," said forward Jonathan Marchessault, who has been with the Golden Knights since the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft.
"We have the All-Star Game here, so I think the city, the organization, came a long way. We did a lot of good things. It's great for the city that it came here, and I think people are happy."
The locals clearly were a large part of the sellout crowd of 17,419. They yelled a loud "Knight!" at the usual spot in the U.S. national anthem. They cheered the Vegas representatives for the Pacific Division: DeBoer, Pietrangelo, Marchessault and forward Mark Stone. They chanted "Go Knights go!" during the final even though the Golden Knights players were gone.
The Metropolitan defeated the Pacific 6-4 in the first semifinal; the Central defeated the Atlantic Division 8-5 in the second.
But because Las Vegas is home to so many transplants and a destination for so many tourists, there was perhaps a greater variety of jerseys in the stands than ever before at an All-Star Game. The place looked like a rainbow. It wouldn't be a surprise if each of the NHL's 32 teams was represented.
Where else would you see that?
"People obviously visit Vegas quite often," Pietrangelo said. "But maybe it's someone's first time, and they get to see the environment -- one, what Vegas brings, but two, what we can bring as an organization.
"I think people who haven't been to a game here can kind of see the environment just in this small sample size, and hopefully that brings them back to maybe spend some time here in the city and get to see a regular-season game or playoff game, because that's when this city really shines."