It’s been nearly two years since the Route 91 Harvest music festival shooting in Las Vegas. A lone gunman firing from a high-rise hotel shot and killed 58 people. More than 850 people were wounded. It all happened just around the time that the Las Vegas Golden Knights were beginning their inaugural season in the NHL. And sometimes you can find community in the least likely of places. "I had been here 10 years, and I had a pretty good grasp of Vegas. But even I underestimated how much togetherness and how much community there was here," says Jesse Granger, who covers the Golden Knights for The Athletic. He was also among the first reporters on the scene of the Harvest festival shooting. "Everyone outside of Vegas sees it as the Strip and hotels and clubs and all that. And pools," Granger says. "I feel like I didn’t even give the city enough credit. And after that, it completely changed the way I viewed Vegas." But for many in Vegas, the events of that day — and the weeks and months after —changed the way they looked at a sport: hockey. Hockey in Vegas 27-year-old Anthony Robone grew up with the sport. His dad brought his love of the game with him from Los Angeles. "He’s always been a big Kings fan. So when we grew up, especially when we started playing hockey, we grew up watching the Kings play all the time. Luc Robitaille, all those guys," Robone says. "Our neighborhood was half the hockey community at the time, I felt like, because a lot of the kids that grew up in our little area are the ones who all went and started playing at the same time. But you go to school and tell people you played hockey and they’d be — kind of give you a weird look." Anthony’s older brother, Nick, went to UNLV and played for the Rebels' roller hockey team. Anthony joined him for the 2011-2012 season. Nick (left) and Anthony Robone (right) grew up as hockey fans in Las Vegas. (Susan Valot) "Even playing for UNLV, you know, for a long time, people would be like, 'Oh, we have a hockey team?' " Anthony says. "I’m like, 'Yeah, we got a hockey team. We’re pretty decent.' " A few years later, Nick signed on as a coach for UNLV’s men’s ice hockey team. Hockey was growing in Vegas. In June of 2016, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that the Las Vegas Golden Knights were coming to town. Of course, hockey fans booed him. "No, no, keep the booing," Bettman responded. "That proves you’re now an NHL city." The NHL had arrived. For the Vegas hockey community, the excitement was like Christmas morning. But while the Golden Knights were preparing to play their first regular season game, Las Vegas was hosting the Route 91 Harvest music festival, a three-day party featuring country artists in an open field at the south end of the Vegas strip. Nick and Anthony and some of their childhood hockey friends decided to attend on Sunday, the final night of the festival. "So I went and played my men’s league game on Sunday, like I always do. And then afterwards, I actually zipped down there as fast as I could," Nick says. Anthony took the day off from his job as a paramedic. But he also had plans for before the concert. "I had actually skipped our Sunday night league game that night to go to the Golden Knights' preseason game against the Sharks," Anthony says. "So [Nick] went and played in our hockey game. I went to the Golden Knights' game. And the plan was to meet up around 8:30, 9 o’clock to catch the last two acts of the concert together. "I was just lucky that we actually got to meet up, because there’s no real good cell service there. And we were just kind of trying to figure out where everyone was at. By the time we all got together, it was the end of Jake Owen's set." Like One-Two ... Then A Barrage "It was kind of like towards the end of the concert, obviously," Nick says. "Jake Owen was the second to last to perform, and Jason Aldean was the last and final one. You just hear like two loud, like, bangs. It was like one-two. And then it kind of stopped. And then you hear like a consistent barrage of what essentially is gunfire. "But, at the time, you’re never thinking, 'OK, I’m getting shot at at a concert.' We’ve definitely shot guns in our lives plenty of times. But I think it’s different when you’re hearing it from how far that is. So you’re still not really sure what it is. Maybe it’s a blown speaker or something. And you crouch down. And everybody’s crouching down. And then the music stops, and you’re like, 'OK. Something’s up.'

"I feel like somebody just smashes me in the chest with a sledge hammer." Nick Robone

"And then it stopped for a second. And all of a sudden it goes again. And probably the second time around when it goes again, you know, I feel like somebody just smashes me in the chest with a sledge hammer. "I crouch down and [I'm] still not thinking I was shot with a bullet. But then blood started coming out of my nose and my mouth. And then I looked down and, you know, I got a hole in my chest. And my brother’s there, thank God. And our buddy, Billy, who’s also a paramedic." "I heard someone say, 'I got hit,' " Anthony says. "And I look over my right shoulder and I see my brother spitting up blood. And that kind of, you know, turned it into, like, 'OK, we’re getting shot at, and my brother’s been shot. We gotta get the hell out of here.' " "They both grab me, and we just start running — just like everybody else starts running," Nick says. "And it’s just chaos, you know. I got one hand around my brother, one hand around Billy, and we’re running as fast as I can go, which isn’t too fast." "And so we started heading east, out of the concert venue," Anthony says. "And, at that point, I was like, 'Oh, crap. Danielle.' " Danielle, Anthony's girlfriend, was with him at the concert. "And I looked up. And luckily she was — they were running right in front of us," Anthony says. "And so I told our friend Emanuel, who’s — he’s in the Army, and I trusted him with her life. And I was just like, 'Hey man, you've got to take her. Go that way. Go to the exit and get her out.' And so, yeah, we ran outside the east gate of the concert venue. "We saw where Nick was shot at that point. He didn’t have an exit wound. He just kind of had an entrance right here above his left pec, right in the spot where your lung would be at. So that kind of got me nervous with his breathing and the blood coming out. So immediately, I was like, 'All right, well, he needs to go to the hospital. It’s the only thing that’s going to save him.' " "You know, and then we get to a cop car," Nick says. "And we kind of place Nick down behind the cop car," Anthony says. "And I remember asking the cops, ‘Hey, man, we gotta get my brother to the hospital right now. He’s been shot.' And he’s like, 'I can’t do that.' I mean, he’s hunkered down behind his car with his AR out." "Cops are, they’re, you know, just as kind of shell shocked as everyone," Nick says. "They’re just telling people to run and get out, go this way or that way." "I kind of realized, like, 'Hey, we’re on our own for this one,' " Anthony says. "I looked at Billy and I said, 'Hey, dude, we’re going to steal this cop car.' So we started wrenching on the door handle. And, of course, it’s locked. And then a few yards down the way, another cop was like right down there. He's looking at us trying to steal a cop car. "So I asked him if he had a first-aid kit. He had kind of like that Walmart first-aid kit with Band-Aids and Neosporin in it. And we took the plastic off of it and made what’s called like an occlusive dressing." "And then we ran further backwards onto a side street," Nick says. "And then that’s when I was sitting down, and we were waiting for an ambulance to come." "Loads and loads of people who had been shot started to kind of flood to where we were at," Anthony says. "And he was shot in the first minute, and it went on for about 10 to 12 minutes. So, I mean, a lot of people continued to get shot. And at that point, when Nick was kind of stable, Billy was able to sit there and stay with Nick, keep an eye on Nick, and I just kind of started to see what other people I could help. "Originally, my plan is, you know, that’s my brother. He’s getting on the first ambulance that shows up. Right as that first ambulance is coming down the street, felt like a lifetime. And right as that’s happening, a guy who had been shot in the neck, he’s bleeding out pretty bad. I was like, 'That guy needs to get on this ambulance.' And, luckily, I saw a couple ambulances coming behind that."

"It was like a scene from ... 'Pearl Harbor,' when they have the nurses running around when Pearl Harbor’s being bombed." Anthony Robone