When the Vegas Golden Knights were crowned Stanley Cup Champions at T-Mobile Arena on June 13, Connie Bronowitz knew exactly what she had to do.
A week after that historic day, Bronowitz – a Golden Knights season-ticket holder since the franchise’s inception in 2016 – reached out to team president Kerry Bubolz with a request: To bring the Stanley Cup to her late husband’s gravesite.
It was an important request for Bronowitz, one that was two years in the making.
In June 2021, as the Golden Knights were battling the Montreal Canadiens in the Stanley Cup Semifinals, her husband, Michael, died due to the COVID-19 virus. One of his final requests to her before he was admitted into the hospital was, if things didn’t go well for him, to bring the Cup to his grave.
“The Knights were in the playoffs, and it was fresh on his mind that it was possible they would win the Cup that year,” Bronowitz told NHL.com. “Those are some of the last words I ever heard him speak, so I took this really seriously.”
The Golden Knights fell short of winning the Cup in 2021, but they completed the task last season, and Bronowitz didn’t forget about her husband’s request.
She emailed Bubolz after the season to see if he would be willing to complete her husband’s wish, but that wasn’t the first time the two had been in contact. Bubolz is known for walking around T-Mobile Arena during games and interacting with fans. Knowing that the Golden Knights were going to be in the playoffs and make a push for the Cup, Bronowitz found Bubolz at a late-season game and introduced herself.
Bubolz had met Michael at previous games and recognized him when Bronowitz showed Bubolz a photo of her husband. The two talked about Michael at the game, but Bronowitz decided not to mention his request at that time as to not jinx the upcoming playoff run.
“In my mind I really just went over to thank him for being so gracious towards Michael and I wanted to show a picture of him to Kerry just to see if he recognized him and he did,” Bronowitz said. “At that point it’s like, ‘Ok now we wait. Does it happen this year? Does it not happen this year?’ And it did and then I reached out to him.”
After going back and forth for a few months, Bubolz and Bronowitz nailed down the logistics and had the Cup visit Michael’s grave at Bunker's Memory Gardens Memorial Park on Sept. 8.
“I met her and about 10 or 11 of her friends and family over at the gravesite,” Bubolz told NHL.com. “They had already decorated it with some VGK stuff and they had a towel that they put down next to the gravesite. The Cup arrived and I pulled it out of the back of the truck with the help of our friends at the Hall of Fame and we proceeded to play John Wick, which is our intro music, and walked towards the site.”
