What happens in Vegas, goes viral.
Athletes have to possess incredible strength and endurance to make their way through their regular seasons, and the toughness intensifies once teams begin their postseason runs.
That’s why once it’s all over and a team is crowned as a champion, it is so incredibly entertaining to see those very athletes who live such a serious, calculated life finally let loose at their championship celebrations.
The Vegas Golden Knights started as an NHL expansion team back in 2017, and they have had a significant amount of success in their short, six-year tenure.
In this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs, the “squad from the strip” played like a historic dynasty, and eventually beat the underdog (or cat, technically) Florida Panthers 4 to 1 in the seven game championship series.
So when it came time for the Vegas hockey team to return to their home turf for their victory parade, the guys who brought the Stanley Cup back to Nevada had a pretty damn good time celebrating.
The vibes were high, and based on the William Karlsson’s (center for the Knights) speech at the celebratory event, the alcohol was flowing.
The speech that Karlsson gave will be studied for centuries to come, especially since he has been known to be a fairly quiet, kept-to-himself player. His teammates even ironically nicknamed him “Wild Bill” because he is the exact opposite of that.
His words involved a ton of spirit, both in that he was clearly passionate about his team and fanbase as well as the fact that he must have had some hard liquor at some point along the parade route.
Some are saying that the 30-year-old hockey player gave the best drunk toast of all time. He started out the proceedings by saying:
“Okay, you guys can hear me? So, this guy, this ‘effing’ guy. Yeah, I know, I know.
So, he was here day one. Yeah.”
Not entirely sure what or who he was talking about, and I don’t think he really knew either. However, he beautifully covers that up by raising his arms up and down to pump up the crowd.
A masterclass in public speaking: if you start to leak confidence, create a distraction. He emphatically went on to say:
“And I know you have been here day f***ing one.”
The crowd loved that. Fan bases love when players give them credit, and the Vegas Knights’ fans were eating it up. Karlsson continued:
“You guys are so amazing. We played Arizona in the first game, and we beat the s**t out of them.”
As he finished this thought, he points out at the crowd as he looks to be battling not to throw up. The fans don’t care about that though, they just loved witnessing the stumbling, intoxicated speech that was unraveling in front of them.
Karlsson then concedes that he didn’t score during the Arizona series:
“And I had no point, no point, but that’s okay. Because at year one I was pretty f***ing great.”
“Wild Bill” puts a little extra into this quote, as he begins to suggestively pelvic thrust as he announces to the world that he “was pretty f***ing great.” He then panders to the crowd once again, saying:
“But you guys were greater. And we’ve been up and down on this journey to the cup.”
As he is getting through this part, someone from the Golden Knight’s media team comes by and taps him on the shoulder and does the “throat cut” gesture to signal that Karlsson should wrap his speech up.
He starts to ramble about another thing after getting the “throat cut” signal, and the same media team member hilariously grabs his arms and says “that’s enough.”
But it wasn’t for Karlsson. He pulled away from the Golden Knight’s employee and shouts:
“No no no, listen to me. We’ve been waiting for six long years for this guy to be MVP.”
And as he is saying this, the woman (not messing around this time) starts to drag him off the stage as he emphatically yells into the microphone:
“Jonathan. Marchessault.”
The microphone is then finally ripped from his hands, but he still managed to give one of sports history’s greatest victory speeches of all time.
Take a look:
