Golden Knights, fans celebrate 1st NHL championship with parade on Las Vegas Strip

Thousands of Vegas Golden Knights fans lined the Las Vegas Strip on Saturday for a Stanley Cup victory parade and a rally in front of the team's home arena to mark the city's first NHL championship.

For the team that played its first game as an expansion franchise in October 2017 and for tourists in hotel rooms with windows overlooking the parade route in 2023, the event bore echoes of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history five years ago. Guests in high-rises with views of the strip were awakened by security guards asking to check around windows for guns or other weapons.

The motorcade route proceeded from an area near Flamingo Road about 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) to Tropicana Avenue before a fan rally at Toshiba Plaza and the Park District in front of T-Mobile Arena.

Las Vegas police said they prepared for upwards of 100,000 people to cram street-level viewing areas along Las Vegas Boulevard for the celebration that planners compared with annual New Year's Eve fireworks shows that in past years drew estimates of 400,000 people.

At one point people separated barricades and climbed fences but the crowd otherwise remained orderly.

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Above the arena stage where the hockey players gathered with the trophy, a banner displayed the names of victims of the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 people and injured more than 850.

A lone gunman rained bullets from 32nd floor windows of the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 20,000 people at an outdoor country music festival across the street. Fifty-eight people died that night and two died later of their injuries. Authorities said more than 850 people were injured. The gunman killed