▶ COMMUNITY

“I can’t say enough about how they’ve embraced the city and how the city’s embraced them,” Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jeff Clark said.

From the very start, the Knights and local first responders have shared a close bond, and those feelings have intensified over time.

On Oct. 1, players went to different police substations in the valley to meet with Metro officers on the anniversary of the 2017 mass shooting. A few days later, they went to the Clark County Fire Department and Metro headquarters to thank first responders.

But it wasn’t just first responders that the Knights courted. John Coogan, the president of the team’s charitable branch, the Vegas Golden Knights Foundation, said the whole organization has worked hard to connect with the community — visiting schools and hospitals, attending fan festivals and promoting youth hockey.

Coogan credited the valley’s embrace of the Knights, in part, to the foundation reaching out to charities and other groups in the team’s infancy.

Back then, wearing Knights colors got him recognized as “one of the Vegas hockey people,” he said. Now he blends in.

“I’m pretty anonymous, which is awesome,” he said.

Among the roughly 800 partnerships the foundation has formed, Coogan singled out the introduction of Knights-affiliated youth and adult sled hockey teams in the Las Vegas Valley this February.

In partnership with the Jake Kieb Foundation, which promotes youth hockey in Southern Nevada, the foundation purchased sleds for those living with physical or mental disabilities to use.

The efforts help grow the game of hockey in the city, particularly for children who might not view hockey as an option for them, Coogan said.

Knights fever also bled into schools. This year, the Golden Knights organization helped introduce street hockey to about 60 local middle schools by providing teacher manuals, student handbooks, goals, sticks, pennies and other equipment, said Shana Venenga, assistant director of the Clark County School District’s School-Community Partnership Program.

“I think it’s really touched every school individually,” she said.

During the Knights’ playoff run, classes teamed up to put together videos of students showing their Knights spirit. Winners received a pep rally at their school featuring the team’s drumline and mascot, Chance.

“Of course all the kids were so excited,” Venenga said.

Fans also showed up in droves for watch parties throughout the valley, particularly during the spring run to the Stanley Cup Final. They brought their own lawn chairs and blankets to brave the spring heat outside T-Mobile Arena or gathered at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center to watch the game on a big screen. They filled seats when the arena doors opened for a road game watch party at the team’s home rink.

Heck, they even showed up outside the team’s practice facility to wish their favorite players luck before playoff road trips.

So of course thousands clamored for a glimpse of their favorite players at two different fan events held at the Fremont Street Experience. The first was a January fanfest that was rescheduled in the wake of the Route 91 Harvest shooting. The second served as a thank-you to the fans about a week after the Knights’ defeat in the Stanley Cup Final.

But even a fledgling fan base is incomplete without sports-inspired dog names.

A 10-year-old Jack Russell terrier named Fenway assumed an alter ego — Bark-Andre Furry — and gained fame and adoration from fans and his (nick)namesake during the postseason run.

Metro debuted a K-9 service dog named Knight after the Maloof family, part-owners of the team, offered to pay for the dog.

It’s all part of how the Knights became an integral piece of the Las Vegas community.

“We don’t ever want to lose sight of the fact that it’s because of the community that we exist,” said Coogan, “and it’s because of the community that we’re successful.”