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The Golden Knights’ gold-and-grey-on-black helmets are everywhere.

They’re on T-shirts and hats worn by mall patrons Cedric Ogbuehi Jersey , on jerseys of moviegoers, on stuffed animals, on mugs and on bumper stickers deep in suburbia. Bars far from the city’s tourist-driven areas show the games on TV, and watch parties have become a regular activity.

The arena rocks when the expansion team that has taken the league by storm appears on its home ice. A city that for years longed for a major sports franchise has truly embraced the Knights.

”It’s so much different live than it is on TV. It’s a whole different experience,” said David Santangelo, a Las Vegas resident who is a season ticket holder and longtime hockey fan. ”People fall in love with it. So many people I talk to at work are saying that they didn’t know it was so exciting. People are really starting to learn about it now.”

Santangelo, who was wearing a Knights jersey, was among hundreds who attended a party Monday in downtown Las Vegas to watch Game 3 of the Knights’ second-round playoff series against the San Jose Sharks. The Golden Knights have a 3-2 series lead after a 5-3 victory over San Jose on Friday night.

For years, questions were raised over whether the tourist-driven city with a long history of hosting big events could support a big league team night after night. Gambling and a relatively small market size steered major franchises elsewhere. Before the Knights dropped the puck, there were naysayers even though initial ticket demand was high.

Average game attendance at T-Mobile Arena is now 18,042. Tourists and comped high-rollers have surely caught games. So have tennis greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, rapper Lil Jon Tyrone Crawford Jersey , poker pro Daniel Negreanu and slugger Bryce Harper before baseball season started. But defying some of those early predictions, it’s been regular residents and their children who have filled the stands game after game.

The crowds bode well for the NFL’s Raiders, who are due to move to Sin City in 2020.

The Knights – who were 200-1 at many sports books to win the Stanley Cup before the season began – proudly declare themselves Vegas Born. Their success on the ice has certainly influenced attendance, but it may also have to do with the city’s desperate need for fellowship around the time the season opened.

The Knights’ home opener in October came only a few days after the city suffered the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The team retired jersey No. 58 during its final home game of the regular season to honor the victims. A banner with 58 stars was hoisted into the rafters. The victims’ names were also projected on the ice.

”I think because all the players are from different places and Las Vegas is a melting pot of people from different places, it’s just really brought community together to have our own team,” said fan Angel Ashby. ”This is a Vegas-born team. It isn’t from somewhere else.”

Ashby had rooted for the Colorado Avalanche, but got rid of the jersey when the Knights arrived. She and her friends rotate hosting watch parties.

The energy has existed at the arena from the beginning, but has progressively gotten louder with the success that followed. For the playoffs, the team has expanded the pregame festivities to include a huge knight’s helmet that is lowered from the rafters in front of the Vegas bench. The Golden Knights enter the ice through the front of the helmet.

Some players toss pucks to their young fans before the game and some children in attendance will get sticks from select players after every game. And the popularity has spilled over from T-Mobile Arena to City National Arena, the team’s practice facility. There, the Vegas Golden Knights Skating Academy has grown from less than 100 kids to nearly 1,000 seven months after its inception.

Todd Pollock Jadeveon Clowney Jersey , vice president of ticketing and suites, said he did not expect the level of support the team has experienced in its debut season and wondered what took so long for Las Vegas to get a major franchise. The team had planned a three-day campaign for season-ticket packages for next season, but the organization canceled after the first day due to an overwhelming response.

”What we’re seeing collectively this year absolutely, positively, I don’t think I could have scripted it any better than the way it’s currently playing out,” said Pollock, who worked in the same capacity with the Los Angeles Kings and the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.

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Mikaela Shiffrin added a second crystal globe in as many days to her ever growing collection on Saturday.

A day after locking up her second straight World Cup overall championship, the American secured her fifth season title in the slalom.

Shiffrin formally won the discipline title as soon as the only remaining challenger, Petra Vlhova, failed to get the top-two result which the Slovakian skier needed in the penultimate event of the season.

However, Shiffrin wrapped up the title in style by winning the race, edging Wendy Holdener of Switzerland by 0.09 seconds. Olympic champion Frida Hansdotter of Sweden was 0.72 behind in third Rob Havenstein Jersey , and Vlhova finished fourth.

”I was happy yesterday but I was still thinking how I could prepare best for the race today and what I needed to do to come out and be motivated and ski really fast again,” said Shiffrin, who finished third in Friday’s giant slalom on the same hill to secure the overall title before skipping the public bib draw in the evening.

”It’s a big challenge to do that at the end of the season but Wendy really wants to win, Frida is coming off her gold medal in slalom in South Korea, so everybody has her own motivation,” Shiffrin said.

Saturday’s result stretched the American’s lead over Vlhova in the slalom standings to 225 points with just the season-ending race at the World Cup finals in Sweden remaining.

It was the American’s fifth slalom title in the past six seasons after only failing to win the discipline in 2016 when she missed five races due to a knee injury. Only Swiss great Vreni Schneider won more slalom titles in her career – six.

Shiffrin, who turns 23 on Tuesday, set a World Cup record on Saturday as she became the first 22-year-old skier, male or female, with 42 World Cup wins.

Also, getting her 11th win of the season was a personal best, though Schneider (14 in 1988-89) and American teammate Lindsey Vonn (12 in 2011-12) won more races in a single season.

Shiffrin was planning to take a few days off before flying to Are and compete in the last GS and slalom races of the season Leonard Fournette Jersey , with nothing more at stake than just the race win.

”It’s still my goal to finish the season as strong as I can,” Shiffrin said, adding she would ”try to have some fire” for the final races of the season.

On a course set by her coach Mike Day, Shiffrin was the fastest in the opening run of Saturday’s slalom, leading Austrians Katharina Gallhuber and Bernadette Schild by 0.30 and 0.39 seconds, respectively.

While the Austrians dropped to fifth and sixth in the final run, Holdener put pressure on Shiffrin by posting the fastest time.

The American lost fractions of her lead at every split time but the margin was still 0.09 to her advantage when she crossed the finish, denying Holdener a maiden slalom victory once more.

The Swiss skier has racked up 16 podiums in the discipline but is yet to win a race – a record in the women’s World Cup.

Both hampered by recent knee injuries, Austria’s Michaela Kirchgasser and Slovakia’s Veronika Velez Zuzulova retired from the sport on Saturday. Wearing clothes inspired by folklore, they used the opening leg for a farewell run at a leisurely pace while hugging coaches along the way.

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