The Vegas Golden Knights will play in their third Stanley Cup Final starting Tuesday in Raleigh, and that doesn’t have this Minnesota Wild fan feeling too good about it. I really thought this was our year. Even before acquiring Quinn Hughes, I thought we were contenders – and we were – but for the second year in a row, our postseason came to an end with the heart of our roster, Joel Eriksson Ek, injured. Hell, if not for the Wild hurting the best defender in the sport, Colorado’s Cale Makar, the Knights might not be playing for their second Stanley Cup in franchise history. 

Speaking of franchise history, the Wild have existed for 26 years and have never made a Stanley Cup Final. They did experience early success like the Knights, making a Cinderella run to the conference finals in 2003 – their third season in the league. They wouldn’t get out of the first round for another decade, though, and it’d be another decade before they got out of round one again. That was this year.

The early success of the Vegas Golden Knights has me torn. I got deep into hockey right around 2017. That’s a year after I moved to the State of Hockey and was introduced to Marc-Andre Fleury, who quickly became my favorite player despite not playing for my favorite team. He was the most athletic goaltender I’d ever seen, and the best character (and perhaps best man) in the sport. When he landed in Minnesota, I threw him flowers after his first home game – a 23-save, overtime victory over Columbus. He said it made him feel like a “figure skater.”

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The Knights quickly became my second-favorite NHL team after my sister and brother-in-law moved to Las Vegas in 2017. Much of that initial VGK roster featured some of my favorite Wild players anyway, which is how the Knights have been so good so fast. Vegas had the luxury of being the lone expansion team in 2017, a year in which the Wild were in salary cap hell and unable to protect players like Matt Dumba and Eric Staal. The result: the Wild traded top prospect Alex Tuch to Vegas in order to ensure the Knights would select Erik Haula over Dumba or Staal in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. Haula was my favorite Wild player at the time.

The Knights went onto the Stanley Cup Final in 2018, but didn’t have enough to overcome Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals, so they sent Tuch to Buffalo for superstar Jack Eichel. Tuch has scored 30-plus goals in three of his last four seasons with the Sabres. Eichel has just posted 90 or more points in his past two seasons in Las Vegas. The Wild selected Connor Dewar with the pick they got from Vegas, and flipped him for Dmitry Ovchinnikov and a fourth-round pick in this year’s draft – not a great return for a 30-goal scorer.

Fans of Minnesota sports teams are used to this sort of pain. I actually host a podcast that serves as a sort of therapy session for some of my fellow fans of mediocre, Minnesota sports franchises. The last time our teams won a major championship was 1991. That’s four franchises playing four sports for 35 years and winning nothing at all. That’s been my life. I’m 40, and the last time I saw my teams win a championship I was just beginning to form memories. Even our WNBA team hasn’t won a title since 2017. Since my sister and brother-in-law moved to Las Vegas, they’ve experienced three cup runs and three WNBA titles. My brother-in-law only got into sports after moving to Vegas and has yet to experience losing.

The plan was to stay with my aunt in Raleigh, who bartends at the Hurricanes games, and watch the Wild play the Canes for their first Stanley Cup. Instead, I’ll donate $5 to the Vegas Golden Knights Foundation for Tuesday’s watch party at T-Mobile Arena. I’ll hit City National Arena, the Knights’ practice facility in Summerlin, and eat some MacKenzie River Pizza during a home game. Maybe I’ll check out BarCanada at The D on Fremont Street for a game, and as a Wild fan, perhaps a trip to the Northstar Bar and Grill in North Las Vegas will be in order.

The Golden Knights will host the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, June 6 and Tuesday, June 8 at 5 p.m. Game 6, if necessary, will be played on Sunday, June 14 at 5 p.m. at T-mobile Arena. All games can be broadcast on ABC.