(Las Vegas) Who can be against a hockey final when it’s close to 40°C outside, there are casinos everywhere, and you can visit a fake Paris and a fake Rome in the same daytime ?

We’ll tell you right now: no one.

Which doesn’t mean Las Vegas smells like hockey. It smells like business around here, but it doesn’t smell much like hockey.

Not because hockey isn’t popular there; you’ll see, when the final starts here on Saturday night, it’s going to be so hot at T-Mobile Arena that it’s going to be right in your living room.

Late Friday afternoon, some 24 hours from the first face-off, there was absolutely no one in the entertainment district in front of the Golden Knights arena. In fact, it took a lot of effort to find an NHL logo somewhere, even on nearby streets.

The obvious reason is because here there is so much to do.

For example, you can already swallow cocktails with dubious colors in the middle of the street early in the morning, and then, if you remember something, you can go see one of the thousand or so shows in town, be it the must-see O from Cirque du Soleil, or even Love, which features the Beatles, or rather their music, because in their case, a final reunion seems quite unlikely.

It is in the face of all this that the NHL will be opposed over the next few days. It’s not easy to find a place in such a jungle, but that’s the price to pay when you choose to settle in a city that never sleeps.