LAS VEGAS (AP) Their story had been too good Calvin de Haan Jersey Kids , their season way too magical.Then the script was suddenly flipped. And the storybook ending the Vegas Golden Knights had desperately hoped for became a story of another kind for the Washington Capitals.Two goals in the third period gave the Caps their first Stanley Cup title, ending 43 years of futility and sending a surprisingly large contingent of red-clad Washington fans into a frenzy. They stood and cheered as the Caps passed the Stanley Cup around, enjoying a scene that up to now no Las Vegas tourist had ever imagined.A few minutes earlier, thousands of Knights fans were on their feet cheering for their team. The game was over, but ”Go Knights Go” reverberated through the arena on the Las Vegas Strip.Both teams had something to celebrate. But only Washington would be drinking out of the Stanley Cup.”When you get this close to the cup it’s hard,” Vegas goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said. ”It doesn’t happen too often. It’s very disappointing.”An inaugural season like no other ended on a bittersweet note for an expansion team like no other. The first major sports team in this gambling city bucked the odds until the end, but in the end this was Washington’s championship to win.It was the Caps who won every playoff series coming from behind. It was the Caps who found a way to win in the third period when things seemed to be going the Knights way.”We got angry and mean,” Washington coach Barry Trotz said. ”Even when they got an extra timeout when the clock broke our guys were like, we got this. There’s not a chance they will score.”It was the Knights, though, who bonded with a city and thrilled fans who before October began knew little more about hockey than it was the fastest game on ice.They played into June, this collection of Golden Misfits, something no one could have imagined for a team that barely had any players a year ago. The temperature outside was close to 100 degrees for Game 5 but hockey worked in the desert and it worked in a city where you don’t have to go far to place a bet on the team.And the bet is that this is a franchise that won’t have to wait 43 years to raise a Stanley Cup of its own.”We came up short but I’m sure in a few days we’ll come up with a lot of positives about the season,” defenseman Deryk Engelland said. ”Right now it’s the worst feeling ever. You never want to lose any game, but especially at this point.”A season that began somberly in the wake of the massacre of 58 people just down the street from the T-Mobile Arena ended 102 games later with a community continuing to heal and a team that far exceeded expectations on and off the ice.It was Engelland who stood before the crowd at the first home game and told them, ”We are Vegas strong,” a message that carried over on the ice. The Knights won their division, and were 12-3 in the playoffs coming into the Final, confounding the hockey experts at every turn.When they won the first game of the series it looked like the tale of an expansion team and its city would soar to new levels. But the Caps came back to win four straight, including the 4-3 win that capped off their own improbable run.”No one gave us a chance from the start Casey Cizikas Jersey ,” said forward David Perron. ”I thought when I got picked in the draft that Vegas would be a fun place to be but the team wouldn’t do much. It’s been a great ride.”While the Capitals were enjoying a lengthy postgame celebration on the ice, the Knights filtered through a somber locker room, talking softly about great times and a painful ending. On the verge of doing something historic, they lost their way and the price to pay for it was another team passing the Cup around on their ice.”It was a phenomenal year and in a couple days we’ll think about that,” Knights coach Gerard Gallant said. ”Every day was fun for us.”A magical season, yes. But it also won’t be long before the reality sinks in that teams just don’t get to the Stanley Cup Final every year.All the Knights had to do was look at the team celebrating on the ice to understand that.—-Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg Red Wings general manager Ken Holland has suddenly come to appreciate how valuable first-round draft picks are when a team’s not in playoff contention at the NHL trade deadline.”I’ve been on that on the other side,” Holland said, recalling Detroit’s heydays in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Red Wings were competing with Dallas, Colorado and New Jersey in vying to add top talent to strengthen their playoff run. ”When those teams made a move, we were aware of it.”The Red Wings were far from that position, sitting in a tie for 12th and five points out of contention, when the trade deadline struck on Monday afternoon. Though Holland wasn’t discounting Detroit’s chances of making a late-season push, he wasn’t exactly dealing from a position of strength.Rather than adding a player, the Red Wings subtracted . They traded established forward Tomas Tartar to the Western Conference-leading Vegas Golden Knights for three draft picks, including a first-round selection.”This wasn’t a rental in this case,” Holland said of Tatar, a three-time 20-goal-scorer with three years left on his contract. ”But the trading of the first-round picks speaks to those teams that have had great years and feel that they’ve got to do something that really impacts their team.”The Golden Knights weren’t the only contender giving up high draft picks on a day 18 trades were completed.Six first-round selections – two of them conditional – were dealt Monday, the most to move on the final day of NHL trading since at least 2008, according to league figures. And no first-rounders had moved on each of the previous two trade-deadline days.San Jose Sharks general manager Doug Wilson attributed the amount of first-rounders dealt to how tight the playoff races are http://www.islandersfanproshop.com/authentic-cal-clutterbuck-jersey , particularly in the Western Conference. Before games on Monday, six points separated the Sharks, who sit second in the Pacific Division standings, and Colorado, which was 11th in the West.”It’s supply and demand of those players that can make a difference,” Wilson said after trading a conditional 2019 first-round pick to acquire Buffalo’s Evander Kane . ”Some people would say pricey, but it almost always is pricey at this time of year when you have competitive juices flowing.”The East-leading Tampa Bay Lightning traded a 2018 first-round pick, a conditional 2019 first-rounder and three players to acquire Rangers captain Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller, New York’s second-leading scorer.The Winnipeg Jets gave up a first-round pick to add even more offense to the NHL’s fourth-best scoring team in acquiring Paul Stastny from St. Louis.Nashville parted ways with a first-round pick to land forward Ryan Hartman from Chicago.Those deals don’t include the first-round pick the Rangers acquired as part of the trade that sent Rick Nash to Boston on Sunday. And Pittsburgh gave up a first-round pick last week as part of a three-team trade to add Ottawa’s Derick Brassard.Rangers GM Jeff Gorton was the big winner as far as accumulating top draft picks to help spur an overhaul of New York’s aging roster.”There’s a lot of opportunity to grow as a team and make our team better,” he said. ”I feel like we’re just starting.”The Rangers now have three first-round picks and seven over the first three rounds, leaving Gorton with the option of using some of them in trades.”Whatever it takes,” he said. ”We’re looking forward to it. Having three picks is exciting.”Some executives found the price of parting with a first-round pick too steep, which prevented them from making moves. They included the Columbus Blue Jackets, who gave up a third-round pick and role players in acquiring defenseman Ian Cole from Ottawa and forward Thomas Vanek from Vancouver.”I guess we were out of that competition because we kind of established our position from the start that we don’t want to give up a first-round pick,” GM Jarmo Kekalainen said before noting the Blue Jackets dealt their 2017 first-round pick to Vegas as part of the NHL expansion draft last June.”I can already feel the effects of the one-year hole, I definitely didn’t want to feel the effects of the two-year hole in the depth chart,” Kekalainen added. ”That was a non-starter.”—AP Hockey Writers Larry Lage and Stephen Whyno, sports writers Josh Dubow and Mitch Stacy, and freelance writers Denis P. Gorman contributed to this report.—
