Golden Knights fans scoop up Stanley Cup championship merchandise

Golden confetti was still strewn across a quiet Toshiba Plaza on Wednesday morning, as a trickle of fans moved across the plaza to get merchandise to celebrate the Golden Knights’ first-ever championship.

They were heading to The Armory, the official team store at T-Mobile Arena, to buy hats, shirts and pucks emblazoned with “Stanley Cup Champions.” The merchandise was hard to come by for some fans.

“I was hoping for a Stanley Cup T-Shirt in my size, but I settled for a hat,” said Gianna Granata, who was shopping at The Armory with her boyfriend Jarod Endter. “I just wanted some that said Stanley Cup Champions on it.”

Your Vegas Golden Knights are Stanley Cup® Champs! Celebrate the big win with new gear!

— Fanatics (@Fanatics) June 14, 2023

The couple drove from Reno to Las Vegas on Monday and watched the series-clinching game along with thousands of others in packed Toshiba Plaza.

“It was an unreal and epic experience. Even though we weren’t in the arena it felt like we were watching the game with everyone in Las Vegas,” said Endter, who walked out of The Armory with a commemorative Stanley Cup puck autographed by Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jonathan Marchessault.

Keith Nelson, a Las Vegas local, also got a commemorative puck as well as a hat and a shirt. He grew up in Minnesota as a fan of the Wild — who’ve never won a Stanley Cup — but has cheered for the Golden Knights since living in Las Vegas.

“I’ve had plenty of heartbreak with my Minnesota teams and I’ve been waiting for the longest time for one of my teams to win,” Nelson said. “I was holding my breath this year since in the inaugural season we won the first Stanley Cup game but lost the rest. But when the Knights were up 4-1 (in Tuesday’s clinching game), I thought we had it well in hand.”

Fans from outside Nevada were also buying gear. Irene and Andy Kelleher live in the tiny central Florida town of Dunnellon and traveled to Las Vegas for Game 5. They spent Wednesday morning buying T-shirts and a flag to replace their old tattered Golden Knights flag. They arrived earlier than Granata and Endter and weren’t able to get Stanley Cup hats but said they planned to return later in the day once the store was restocked.

The Florida couple were rooting against their home state Florida Panthers since they usually visit Las Vegas four to six times a year and have been pulling for the Golden Knights since their inaugural season of 2017-18. They couldn’t pass up the opportunity to celebrate in person with the rest of the Knights’ fan base.

“As soon as they made it to the final, I told my husband we would regret it if we didn’t come,” Irene Kelleher said. “And when it looked they could win it in five, we bought our tickets.”

At The Arsenal, the merchandise shop at City National Arena, the Knights’ practice facility, the line to just get inside snaked 128 yards out the entrance Wednesday morning. Huge windows gave fans a glimpse at the ice rinks where Golden Knights players trained for years to lift the Stanley Cup trophy for the first time in franchise history Tuesday night.

From there, after fans picked out their championship apparel, a line to pay stretched around the perimeter of the store.

There were ball caps, T-shirts, polo shirts, beach towels, quarter-zips, baby shirts, framed pictures, game programs, license plate frames, shot glasses, pint glasses, and jacket patches — all signifying that the Las Vegas Golden Knights were Stanley Cup champions.

Krystin Salceco said her father is a huge Golden Knights fan, and as it was his birthday, she was there to buy him a T-shirt and the hat players wore in their celebration on the ice at T-Mobile Arena.

“I’m born and raised in Vegas, so as long as they’ve been a team, we’ve been fans,” Salceco said.

With the success of the Las Vegas Aces, the arrival of the Raiders in 2020, the likelihood that the Oakland A’s will move to town and talk of an NBA expansion franchise, Salceco said she loves that her hometown has become a sports town. The city-wide bonding experience of professional sports is something she said she wished Las Vegas had when she was a kid.

Angelina DeFilippis, a retail associate at The Arsenal, said all the championship gear was printed and shipped overnight, and shoppers have gone straight for the hats. Since their inaugural season, she’s noticed a groundswell of support for the Golden Knights in the community.

“With the team, October 1 was a huge turning point in the franchise, because the team was out in the community helping survivors, helping people who were in the hospital, showing their support after a big tragedy in this city,” she said.

Less than a week before the Golden Knights’ first-ever game, more than 60 people were killed and hundreds more were injured just south of T-Mobile Arena in what remains the deadliest mass shooting in recent American history. DeFilippis said the Golden Knights’ presence in the community in the aftermath endeared them to the city.

“I think people saw that, not only were they playing good hockey, but they were out in the community showing their support back to fans.”

Mark Spreitzer waited in line with his son and wife to update their gear. Spreitzer has lived in Las Vegas since 1975 and said that the success of the Golden Knights and the Aces, shows the kind of support his city can offer to homegrown franchises. He loves that professional sports have added yet another attraction to Sin City, one for the entire family.

“It’s something for the kids to do, they needed that big time, and even for the adults,” he said. “[The Knights] sell out every home game, and I think baseball will probably have the same effect.”

With the talk of a new baseball team, Spreitzer is wary of “other city rejections,” like the A’s, with a recent track record for losing and low-fan support.

“This city wants winners,” he said.

Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com or on Twitter @seanhemmers34. Contact Christian Casale at ccasale@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4551. Follow @vanityhack on Twitter.