(Stanley Cup Finals) God, I hope my friend is right...

And so, now, we are less than 24 hours from the ultimate Vegas production...

In Year One, the Las Vegas Golden Knights have Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals on Memorial Day, home ice advantage for the series, and are the favorites to win it.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, could have imagined it 9 months ago.  I recall being in Las Vegas for my annual August trip and seeing an over-under for their season point total under 45!!

And then I started having this feeling in the pit of my stomach when they went 7-2-1 or something ridiculous to start the season.

Oh no....

And then followed it as they were actually flirting with the President's Trophy for most of the season!

Dear God, they aren't...

Kinda went by the wayside in the last month of the season, but now back on for the playoffs...

4-0 over the Kings
4-1 over the Sharks
4-1 over the Jets.

And now, according to VegasInsider.com at the time of typing this...

Vegas is -150 to win Game 1, -140 to win the series.

And all I can think of is Stephen Paddock and #VegasStrong -- and what a Year One Stanley Cup would do for Vegas, and also for all the crazed sports fans who aren't below threatening athletes on Twitter and such...

I think this could motivate a crazed ultra in this country to do something to motivate their favorite sports league to give their team a championship -- we've seen far too many of them already in the last 17 years with tragedy followed by championship, especially rigged championship.

But what do you think some crazed idiot would do with even the belief of understanding that doing something egregious could get his team a championship?

As I've been talking to people about it, my anonymous friend has come up with a viable counter-theory:  Given the failures of the Phoenix Coyotes, two teams in Atlanta, and numerous other non-hockey-town efforts by the NHL to expand the game continent-wide, my friend believes Gary Bettman is doing this to force relevance to one of these emerging markets to force relevance on Las Vegas.

All I can say is:  I damn well hope my friend is right.  I don't know if I'm comfortable at all with a sports world in which tragedy can trigger victory on such a blatant scale.

I do hope my friend is right, but I shudder to think of the alternative...