Beating the odds: The Vegas Golden Knights are on the verge of sporting history in the Nevada desert

The house always wins, right?

When the puck dropped on the Vegas Golden Knights' first season in the NHL back in October, they were listed by local bookmakers as a 500-1 shot to lift the Stanley Cup.

And no one was arguing. Ice hockey in the desert isn't new - the Arizona Coyotes have been plugging away with very little success since 1996 - but this was a brand new franchise, dreamt up out of the sand and plonked into the T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas strip, featuring a band of misfits drawn from the cast-offs of the league's 30 other teams. This was as far from the storied franchises of Chicago, Detroit, Montreal and Pittsburgh as you could get.

The Golden Knights were going to be bad.

And yet, something astonishing is happening in southern Nevada. Ice hockey has already had its "Miracle on Ice" - when the US men's team beat the four-time defending gold medalists Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics - but this sequel threatens something even better, because these misfits are just four games away from winning the Stanley Cup.

The stats tell the story of what they have done.

They won the Pacific Division by eight points, and finished fourth on goals scored.

William Karlsson finished the regular season third in the league with 43 goals, Marc-Andre Fleury third in goals against, giving up just 2.24 goals a game. Karlsson was backed up by Jonathan Marchessault's 27 goals and 48 assists. David Perron topped the team with 50 assists.

Karlsson was an astonishing +49 - meaning his team scored 49 more goals than they conceded when he was on the ice. The next highest in the league was Marchessault on +36.

In the playoffs, they swept the LA Kings 4-0, beat San Jose 4-2 and brushed past the Winnipeg Jets 4-1 to reach the final.

All this under the stewardship of head coach Gerard Gallant, who has his team playing an exciting brand of hockey, and general manager George McPhee, who looks to have pulled off one of the finest roster constructions in sporting history.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Even in the fiercely egalitarian arena of American sport - where salary caps and draft picks do their best to ensure every team can dream of glory - the Vegas players should not be sitting at home waiting to see who they will play for ice hockey's biggest prize.

They will know by May 23, when the Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning play the decisive game seven of their series.

But still, they were the unwanted. They should be on the golf course with 28 other teams, perhaps pushing for an offseason move to a more hockey-friendly town. The Colorado Avalanche wouldn't be too much of a haul.

It should be said, and what is now patently obvious, these were not bad players, despite the pre-season predictions of total failure. In the expansion draft last summer, the Golden Knights took one player from each of the 30 other teams to fill their roster and there were strict rules about who they could and couldn't pluck.

In simple terms, teams were able to protect seven players they did not want to lose. Everyone else was fair game.

So, they were not bad players.

James Neal was a former 40-goal scorer, Marchessault was coming off the back of a 30-goal season with the Florida Panthers, Marc Methot was a top-pairing defenceman and in Fleury, they claimed a three-time Stanley Cup winner from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

But they were not supposed to contend. Not this year.

The team's owner Bill Foley said he just hoped they wouldn't get thrashed. "Just lose by a goal or two." Expectations were not high.

Yet here we are.

And, in the background, something far bigger than hockey. The Golden Knights' first regular season game was just a week after the mass shooting in the city that killed 58 people and the organisation knew its responsibility to the community.

Defenseman Deryk Engelland addressed the crowd in a 58-second speech in the pre-game ceremony and the bond was formed.

The effect was that the team, drawn of individuals from all over the country and the world, became an unlikely part of the healing process.

They won eight of their first nine games, offering a much-needed distraction to a city in turmoil.

Knights owner Bill Foley said: "I'm so proud of the whole team. The team just connected to the town. They were brand new here. No one knew them. And they still went out and [experienced] some tough situations.

"From then on, it was pretty unbelievable."

All that's left now is the final chapter, and should they complete the miracle and lift the enormous Stanley Cup, you suspect Hollywood will be casting its eyes 270 miles west for inspiration for its next feel-good sporting movie - and we know the victory parade down the Strip would be something special.

Only one section of the city doesn't want them to win, given the potential payout. The house always wins? We may just be about to witness the exception that proves the rule.