Mark Stone helped define Golden Knights hockey, now he can add the exclamation

DALLAS, Texas – Mark Stone avoided touching the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl. 

The Vegas Golden Knights kind of hovered around it, posed for a picture with his teammates around the Western Conference championship trophy, and then skated off toward the Stanley Cup Final. 

It was fitting of Stone’s impact in Vegas. 

Stone isn’t one of the original Golden Knights, he’s not one of the original misfits that made a surprise cup run in 2018, but he represents so much of what Vegas has come to represent. 

The mid-season trade from the Ottawa Senators to Vegas in 2019 started a trend where George McPhee and Kelly McCrimmon were no longer expansion draft-prospectors, but wheeling-and-dealing GMs that would aggressively manipulate the salary cap to deliver Bill Foley’s vision of a Stanley Cup title within s