UNLV assistant hockey coach Nick Robone watched the first game in Golden Knights’ history from his hospital bed in the Sunrise intensive care unit.

On Oct. 6, 2017, Robone was only a handful of days removed from a medically-induced coma that was necessary for doctors to open up his rib cage and remove a bullet.

Five days prior — exactly one year ago today — thousands of bullets rained down from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay onto the Route 91 Harvest festival on the Las Vegas Strip. One of them struck Robone in the chest, narrowly missing his heart and lung.

Robone was joined at the hospital by his brother, Anthony, and six close friends to watch the Golden Knights take on the Stars. Midway through the third period, Vegas forward James Neal feathered a wrist shot underneath Stars’ goaltender Kari Lehtonen, and Robone’s hospital room erupted with cheers.

He paused and looked around in disbelief.

“It was so weird,” Robone recalled. “I’ve watched hundreds of hockey games with the people that were in that room, and we’ve never all cheered at the same time. Not once.”

Robone was born and raised in Las Vegas, and grew up a die hard Kings fan. His brother was a Red Wings fan, and each of his friends supported different teams around the NHL. Hockey games were usually a combative experience for the group, but not that night.

“At that moment I knew everyone is a Knights fan,” Robone said.

During that moment Robone’s mind wasn’t on his badly bruised lung or the months of physical therapy lying in front of him. He was enjoying hockey, and his hometown’s first major professional sports team that helped it heal when it needed it most.

It began a year ago when the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history claimed the lives of 58 people and injured 500 more. It happened just hours after the Golden Knights’ final preseason game, and less than a mile away from T-Mobile Arena.

“We were just there hanging out, having a good time and all of a sudden you hear two loud bangs,” said Robone, who was about 100 yards from the main stage of the festival when the shooting began. “It sounded kind of like maybe a car backfiring, and it was only two of them so it was a little weird. Jason Aldean is still playing and nobody is really thinking much of it.

“Seconds later you hear a barrage of that noise,” he said. “I look around and I don’t see anyone hurt but people are ducking down, so I start ducking down and Jason Aldean stops playing. The sound starts again and bam I got shot.”

Robone hunched over and blood began pouring from his mouth and nose. His brother Anthony is a paramedic for Henderson Fire Department and he helped carry Robone behind a police car for safety as bullets continued to whiz by. There he ripped Robone’s shirt off and applied bandages to his wound.

“An ambulance came but there were a lot of people that were worse off than me so they got on the first one,” Robone said. “The second one came and I wound up getting on that. It took me to Sunrise Hospital.”

Robone recalls the trauma center, which was jam-packed with patients and covered in blood, and remembers telling himself to breathe slowly and remain calm. A doctor finally saw him, and he woke up two days later with a scar stretching the length of his torso.

There to greet him were seven members of the Golden Knights, including Nate Schmidt, Reilly Smith, Deryk Engelland and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.

“It meant so much,” Robone said. “It showed that they weren’t just trying to promote the team, they were trying to help the city heal at a time the city needed it most. It created a connection between myself and those guys.”

Hockey helped the city of Las Vegas in its darkest hour in so many ways. The Golden Knights partnered with the NHL to donate $300,000 to victims and first responders. Players that had never played a game as Golden Knights and only moved to Las Vegas less than a month before immediately treated the city as their own.

Players visited blood banks, where so many Las Vegan residents donated that the banks eventually had to stop accepting blood because they were at capacity.

Engelland, Jon Merrill and other players visited families and victims at the convention center, as well as first responders at the police station. Watching their faces light up at the sight of the players was truly special. For some it was the first time they’d smiled in days.

Even if only for a second, the Golden Knights gave them a reprieve from the terror of the previous couple days.

Deryk Engelland addresses the crown on Oct. 10. (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)

Before the Oct. 10 home opener, the team honored those who lost their lives in an emotionally-charged pregame ceremony that concluded with Engelland’s speech.

“Like all of you, I’m proud to call Las Vegas home,” Engelland said to the glassy-eyed 18,191 in attendance. “I met my wife here. Our kids were born here. I know how special this city is. To all the brave first responders that have worked tirelessly and courageously through this whole tragedy, we thank you.

“To the families and friends of the victims, we’ll do everything we can to help you and our city heal.

“We are Vegas Strong.”

The spectacular season that followed captured the hearts of Las Vegas. Fans camped outside of the practice facility as early as 4 a.m. just for admission to practice, which was eventually limited after fans were breaking fire codes due to overcapacity.

The atmosphere at T-Mobile Arena rivaled any venue in the NHL, with the Golden Knights are already selling the building out for preseason games this year.

For a city that’s never had a major professional sports team, the Golden Knights provided unity. Las Vegas is a transient city, so prior to last year most hockey fans’ allegiances belonged to their hometown team, or whichever was on their betting slip that night.

“Hockey played such a big role (in my recovery) because I love it so much and I wanted to get back to it,” said Robone, who played hockey at UNLV and now is a coach for the team. “The team was excelling and I wanted to be a part of that. I can’t do that from my house or hospital bed, so it’s like, ‘Hey, get your ass up and get to the rink.’”

Nick Robone at the 2018 NHL awards (Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

He can still remember the first time he stepped on the ice following the shooting. Doctors suggested he stay off the ice until at least March, but Robone went above and beyond in his rehab. All for hockey.

“You don’t want to take things like that for granted,” he said.

A year later he’s 100 percent healthy, and the city of Las Vegas is stronger than ever. Robone has loved hockey his entire life, and now his hometown loves it too.

On this day especially, it still hurts to think about the lives lost that night. It hurts a lot.

Golden Knights players will serve lunch to Las Vegas-area first responders today in an attempt to again provide a distraction.

The team came into existence at the perfect time. Initially they provided Las Vegas with a distraction, and eventually they provided it with an identity. Because the Golden Knights are Las Vegas in every sense.

On the surface, the team is flashy — like William Karlsson’s between-the-legs breakaway goal and their over-the-top pregame ceremony. That’s the characterization most outsiders give Las Vegas as a city.

But the Golden Knights didn’t win the Western Conference with flash. They won by being one of the hardest working teams in the NHL with an unrelenting forecheck that crumbled most. They represent the hard-working people of Las Vegas. The service-industry workers who don’t get home until 2 a.m. after a grinding 12-hour shift.

“That’s the story of our club,” Jonathan Marchessault said. “We’re just a bunch of hockey players that wanted to find a home.

“And we did.”

Whether the “Vegas Strong” phrase is on a t-shirt, painted on the back of an ambulance, tattooed on someone’s forearm, or on the dasher board beneath the Golden Knights’ bench, it’s a constant reminder of how the city persevered.

While it can never erase what happened, there’s no doubt that over the past year hockey has helped the city heal.

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(Top photo: David Becker/NHLI via Getty Images)