When it was his turn, Kyle Moore received the Stanley Cup and lifted it over his head. He then lowered it to give it a kiss, lifted the 35-pound trophy again, then passed it to the next person on the ice at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
It was a long way from Oley.
Moore, a 2005 Oley Valley grad, is the associate head athletic trainer for the Vegas Golden Knights, who clinched their first Stanley Cup championship with a 9-3 win over the Florida Panthers in Game 5 Tuesday.
“It was just a culmination of just a long season, a long playoff run,” Moore, 36, said Friday morning. “It was a long grind of a season for the players and also the staff.
“That night was just an amazing celebration. It’s an amazing celebration to be able to be there, not only with all your co-workers that you’ve been through everything with and the players who you’ve been through everything with, but also to have family there was an amazing thing as well.”
Moore’s wife, Lauren, also a 2005 Oley Valley grad whose maiden name is Hoover, and their 2-year-old son, Luke, joined Moore on the ice for the celebration.
“He was going bananas looking at everything, running on the ice and having fun,” Moore said of Luke.
The Moore family may get more up-close time with the Stanley Cup. Moore, who also could get his name on the Cup, said that while nothing is official, typically someone in his position gets to have the Stanley Cup for a day.
“We haven’t gotten all those kinds of things pinned down,” he said. “It’s not for sure, but if I do, my plan is to bring it to Oley.”
That would be one more moment that would not only be a culmination of that long season, but also of Moore’s journey from rural Berks County to the Nevada desert, from being an athletic training student at East Stroudsburg University to standing on the ice with the Stanley Cup in the NHL.
“My goal was to work in the NHL,” Moore said. “I wanted to just get to the top sports level of what an athletic trainer could do. I always wanted to win the Stanley Cup, but I didn’t know if it would ever happen.”
Moore’s interest in pursuing a career in ice hockey was piqued through his experiences with the Reading Royals. Moore said the role wasn’t anything formal, but Brian Grogesky, then the Royals trainer and now the head trainer for the AHL’s Lehigh Valley Phantoms, welcomed him when he reached out to volunteer and observe as a college sophomore.
“I was just young in the field, passionate about the field, but didn’t know what I wanted to work with, and once I got exposed to just the ice hockey culture — and the ice hockey athlete is like no other athlete I’ve met; they’re so down to earth, so respectful, so family oriented — that once I learned about that and what that culture was like, and that happened in Reading, that’s when I really started to gear my experiences to ice hockey.”
Moore was an intern with the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in 2008-09, then went to pursue a master’s degree in athletic training at Ohio University after getting his bachelor’s from East Stroudsburg. During his time at Ohio U., he was the head trainer for the men’s ice hockey team.
He then had stints working at University of New England and for about six months as an assistant trainer at Albright before being hired as the head athletic trainer at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
He spent five seasons with Penguins — and assisted with Pittsburgh during its Stanley Cup runs in 2016 and ’17 — before being hired by the Knights during the NHL playoffs in 2017.
“I remember during the interviews for the job here, I looked over at my wife,” Moore said, “I’m like, ‘Are you sure you’re cool with this? It’s Las Vegas. Are you sure you’re cool with this?’
“I mean, she’s been the most supportive person in me being where I am more than anyone.
“She makes such a sacrifice of dealing with a husband that’s barely home. Obviously now with children, she keeps everything together and it’s amazing what she does.”
The Moores, who are expecting their second child in September, have adapted to life in Vegas. Kyle, who played soccer and basketball and participated in track and field at Oley Valley, said he’s taken up mountain biking and plays golf.
“It’s just a great place to live,” Moore said. “It’s weird that our kids’ forever hometown will be Las Vegas.”
But Las Vegas clearly has become home. Moore has been part of the Golden Knights organization since the beginning, as he was hired before the first season, 2017-18, and he’s seen how the community has embraced the Knights, and how he’s embraced the community.
“I mean it’s an amazing thing in itself just being a part of the actual beginning, like the true beginning of everything that started with that team,” Moore said. “Literally moved in all of the strength and conditioning equipment, moved everything into a new building, set everything up. To see it come to where it is now is a cool thing to think back on and look back on.”
He definitely did some looking back Tuesday. Six players were on the roster that night from Vegas’ inaugural team, which made a surprise run to the Stanley Cup Final. And many others, including the training staff, have been there since Day One.
“We just became so close as a staff,” Moore said, “for us personally and then also professionally, and it’s been amazing to work alongside passionate staff members to be able to provide the best services we can for our players.”
With that line of thinking, it’s not surprising that some of Moore’s biggest memories from this season aren’t not specifically related to in-game moments.
“I can’t go into specifics, but I mean we’ve had some complicated cases and we’ve had some long-term injuries and to be able to see those players perform throughout the playoff run was probably one of the more rewarding experiences,” he said, “just to be able to see that they were able to compete and win a Cup with their teammates, that’s what comes to mind right now.
Moore described Tuesday’s game as “crazy.” The Golden Knights scored two goals in the first period, then the final four of the second to take a 6-1 lead. They went up 7-1 in the third, making the eventual victory seem inevitable.
Moore said he thinks the first person he hugged when it was over was head coach Bruce Cassidy.
“I did try to take a moment to just stand there and watch all the guys run out and get their pile going and just see what the arena was like,” Moore said. “The most amazing thing was that it was so special to win it at home because that doesn’t happen all the time.
“Throughout the whole Cup presentation and everything nobody left. The whole arena was just absolutely slammed. It was so cool to see.”
Moore, the rest of the organization and their fans will get one more opportunity to celebrate Saturday night when the team parades down the Strip.
“The parade is going to be an unbelievable experience,” Moore said.
Then Moore will try to relax during what will be a shorter offseason, that he hopes includes a trip with the Stanley Cup to Pennsylvania.
“It’s just such a special run, such a special season,” Moore said. “This team, this playoff run felt so different than others. Because I’ve been very fortunate. I mean, other than last season, every year I’ve worked in professional sports, I’ve made the playoffs. So I’ve been through a lot of playoff runs.
“And this one was different. I was telling Lauren the whole time, this one just feels like an extension of the regular season. And I think it was just because our team was so confident, they were just so ready to take it and be ready to just plow through this playoff run. None of the other playoff runs had felt that way. It was amazing. It was an amazing experience.”
