About two years ago, the NHL officially announced that their would be an expansion team in Las Vegas. The news was met with just as much enthusiasm as it was skepticism. Yes, the Vegas market was hungry for a pro team, but would another NHL team really flourish in the desert? After all, they’d tried it before with the Arizona Coyotes and look how that turned out.

Many people were skeptical, especially me, but the Vegas experiment has proved to be an NHL expansion success that hasn’t been seen in decades. I was certain it was doomed to fail.

It is the law of hot take writing that you must be willing to eat your words when the occasion calls for it. I don’t regret having written that column, but I’m also thrilled to be proven wrong.

What’s happening in Vegas now is something no one could have or did predict. The team’s on-ice success is something many, many people have tried to explain but everyone seems to fall a little short. Whether you attribute it to the Vegas Flu, shrewd roster construction, or to a team of castoffs playing with a chip on their shoulder, it’s clear that the team’s success isn’t just a fluke of luck or timing.

The Golden Knights started setting records at the start of the season and they haven’t really stopped. The won 15 out of their first 22 games, making them the fastest first-year team in NHL history to reach that bench mark. By February 1, they set an NHL record for most wins by a team in its inaugural season, with 34 victories, and they still had a third of the season left to play. Not only did the Knights become the first expansion team to make the playoffs since 1979-80, they ended up winning the Pacific Division. It’s been a meteoric rise that has quickly captured the heart of the city and it came when they desperately needed something good to believe in.

As Vegas steamrolled through their first playoff series and swept the Los Angeles Kings, my Twitter mentions started to ding with Vegas citizens pointing out my column from two years ago. Some were pleasantly gloating, some were frustrated that I overlooked their enthusiasm for a sports team, but the majority of people wanted to share what made them so proud to be Vegas residents.

You underestimated us was the message. Just like many NHL teams had initially underestimated the Golden Knights.

“Every commentary on why Vegas’ team was doomed made the same fundamental mistake – no one thinks real people actually live here,” said Jennifer Carleton, a 47-year-old attorney who has lived in Vegas for the past 11 years. “Yes, there are a lot of tourists. But we have teachers and pharmacists too. We are a real city, one with a ton of pride.”

For a long time, people were looking for something to channel all that pride into. In the 90s they rallied around UNLV, but it wasn’t the same as this.

“People don’t consider us a real city,” said JC Martin, a marketing executive in the area who runs a website dedicated to happenings around the city. Martin had maybe watched a handful of NHL games before, but now considers himself a huge Knights fan. “There’s real people here and we’ve been waiting for a team to root for. The Knights have become about something that’s more than just sports.”

For a lot of fans, the Knights have been essential to building a sense of community for residents who have longed for something to connect them.

Dave Nadkarni, who moved to the city seven years ago from Utah, now considers Vegas is home. Nadkarni was a casual hockey fan who rooted for the Los Angeles Kings before the Knights came to town.

“Now, I talk about hockey with everyone. I know it’s a little thing, but you can talk about hockey with people waiting in line at the store, or just wave to someone wearing a jersey. We all have that in common now.”

The Golden Knights’ home opener came less than a week after a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival, killing 58 people. For people outside the city, the mass shooting has pushed back into our national consciousness, but the citizens of Vegas face daily reminders of the tragedy and haven’t had the luxury of forgetting.

“Everyone has someone, or knows someone who knows someone who has a connection to the shooting,” Nadkarni said. “It’s painful and we live with it every day, but we’re also trying to move forward.”

Unprompted, everyone who I spoke to or emailed with brought up the events of October 1 as a turning point.

“I lost a friend in the massacre,” Vegas resident Travis Turner wrote. “But, additionally I felt that our city collapsed. The city that sounded busy was silent. For days people would barely speak. You could hear a pin drop on the freeway. Not a single horn honked. People rightfully so fell into a depression, a loss of hope.”

As sports often do, the Golden Knights have proved a way to rise above the tragedy and have been essential to helping the city recover emotionally from a horrendous act of terrorism.

“Having the team in this city during 1 October created a bond for all of us,” said Dena duBoef-Roth, a native Las Vegan who runs special events for boxing fans. “None of these guys were from Las Vegas, except for one, yet they became one of us. They were not an just NHL expansion team. They were our team.”

Many pointed to the catharsis of Knights home opener on October 6, which paid tribute to the victims of the shooting and all the first responders in an emotional pregame ceremony.

Michael Lange, a middle school teacher, was at home watching the tribute.

“It was a real rallying point for the city,” he said. “The entire ride has been amazing, but it all started with that opening ceremony and how they became a part of the community right away.”

It was the same for Turner.

“I felt a sigh of relief. What just felt like an eternity of hopelessness 5 days earlier quickly turned around and I felt Las Vegas’ heart beat start to beat faster, and stronger. That night in the T-Mobile Arena we built a sense of community that I had never felt before,” he said.

The Knights have been able to provide people with a much needed escape during a trying time. Among those is Angela Stolte, a registered nurse who works the night shift in the trauma ward a UMC, the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Nevada. She was working the night of the shooting.

“I remember the first word of an active, maybe multiple active shooters, on the Strip and minutes later the victims flooded in,” she wrote in an email. “I still can’t put to words all the thoughts and feelings of that night and the days and weeks that followed. The outpouring support from all over the world, but what truly surprised me most, was how our city came together.”

Stolte has lived in Vegas for over 20 years, and going to Knights games has provided an escape from what she called “Trauma Brain.”

It wasn’t just the home opener that mattered, people saw and connected to the actions of the players who have been a strong and growing presence in the community throughout the season.

“Its awesome to see them around, helping people, volunteering, they’re just great guys.” Lange said.

Because the players were quick to embrace Vegas as their own, people were quick to embrace them right back. In a way, they see themselves in the players.

“We are good, really good, the best at making people feel welcome,” Carleton said. “People who, I don’t know, were let go by their last job or their last team. We don’t judge. That’s what makes this city and the people in it so great.”

For most of the fans, the fact that the Knights have been playing wonderful hockey is just an added bonus. It’s the feeling they create that seems to have the most impact. For Jessica Meyer, the sense of community the Knights provided was the last piece missing for her.

“I love Las Vegas too much to leave it and now the Knights have completed my city,” she said.

The influx of events that had to came together to make Vegas one of the greatest sports stories of the year can’t be replicated, but what the team provides is more than just sports. The Knights have made a real community for fans, provided a pathway to healing and helped a city bursting with local pride channel it for others to see.

“We always hope they’ll win,” Martin said. “But even if they don’t, we still love them. They’re still our team.”