(Las Vegas) Who can be against a hockey final when it’s close to 40°C outside, there are casinos everywhere, and you can visit a fake Paris and a fake Rome in the same daytime ?
We’ll tell you right away: no one.
Which doesn’t mean that Las Vegas smells like hockey. It smells like business around here, but it doesn’t smell much like hockey.
Not because hockey isn’t popular there; you’ll see, when the final starts here on Saturday night, it’s going to be so hot in the T-Mobile Arena that it’s going to be right in your living room.
But do we talk about hockey here, apart from the arena and the bars nearby? Not much.
Late Friday afternoon, some 24 hours from the first face-off, there was absolutely no one in the entertainment district in front of the Golden Knights arena. In fact, it took a lot of effort to find an NHL logo somewhere, even on nearby streets.
The obvious reason: it’s because there’s so much to do here.
PHOTO RICHARD LABBÉ, THE PRESS
Quiet, the Toshiba Plaza the day before the Stanley Cup final
For example, you can already swallow cocktails with dubious colors in the middle of the street early in the morning, and then, if you remember something, you can go see one of the thousand or so shows in town, whether it’s the must-see O from Cirque du Soleil, or even Lovewhich features the Beatles, or rather their music, because in their case, a final reunion seems quite unlikely.
It is against all of this that the NHL will be up against over the next few days. It’s not easy to make a place for yourself in such a jungle, but that’s the price to pay when you choose to settle in a city that never sleeps.