It was 4:30 p.m., and the puck wouldn’t be dropped for another two hours. But the Jersey People already had gathered for the latest installment of Hockey Night in Las Vegas.
This is not a reference to puckheads who hail from New Jersey, though with the Rangers in town on Sunday, there was no shortage of those. They jammed into the bars and bistros that form a 100-proof corridor from The Park to T-Mobile Arena, home of the first-place (!) Golden Knights.
I’m talking about everybody who had a belly or some other body part pressed to the bar that was wearing a hockey sweater.