Golden Knights blast Panthers 9-3 in Game 5 to capture first Stanley Cup title

LAS VEGAS – The Golden Knights delivered their city a true Vegas-style party from dazzling passes to Mark Stone‘s hat trick to all-out goal celebrations, capturing the young organization’s first Stanley Cup with a 9-3 romp over the beaten up and exhausted Florida Panthers on Tuesday night.

Coach Bruce Cassidy, in a nod to the Knights’ brief history, started five of the original Vegas players known as the Misfits and put the sixth on the second shift. Cassidy sounded confident the day before the game that his team would play well, and it certainly did, blowing open a one-goal game in the second period to lead 6-1. The nine goals tied the record for the most in a Cup Final.

“Vegas, you certainly know how to throw a party,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told the crowd. “What’s going on inside this arena and outside is incredible and a testament to what a great hockey market this is.

“What has happened here has been simply incredible. Not only is Vegas a hockey town, it’s a championship town.”

Vegas closed out the series in five games to win the cup before a delirious franchise-record crowd of 19,058 at T-Mobile Arena that drowned out the pregame introductions of forward Jonathan Marchessault and goalie Adin Hill and cheered all the way through the final buzzer.

Marchessault, who ended the postseason with a 10-game points streak, received the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP.

“I couldn’t be more proud of our team, our organization,” Marchessault said. “Everybody stepped up at different times and that’s why we’re winners.”

Stone’s hat trick – with the third into an empty net with 5:54 left – was the first in a Stanley Cup Final since Colorado’s Peter Forsberg in 1996, also against the Panthers.

The Knights got the rest of