Fans will celebrate the Los Angeles Kings' second Stanley Cup Final victory in three years Monday during a downtown LA parade parade that will end at Staples Center with a rally.
The parade will begin at noon at the corner of Figueroa and West 5th streets, move south along Figueroa Street and end at LA Live near Staples Center, where a giant banner that reads "We Are All Kings" is hanging above an entrance. The parade is expected to last 30 to 45 minutes.
Flatbed trucks with bleachers arrived along the parade route early Monday. Double-decker buses draped with the Kings logo were parked downtown, ready to carry the Stanley Cup champions past fans -- some of whom staked out a viewing area as early as 6 a.m.
A sold-out rally will be inside Staples Center at 1 p.m. Ticket holders will be able to enter at 11:30 a.m. to watch the parade on giant video screens. Restaurants at LA Live will remain open during the time of the parade, organizers said. Access will be limited to the area's northern entrance off Olympic Boulevard.
The Kings beat the New York Rangers in a 3-2 double-overtime win Friday night after a thrilling series, the only one of the NHL playoffs that the Kings did not need seven games to win. The win marked another comeback victory -- Los Angeles fell behind 2-1 in the second period -- for a team that displayed resiliency throughout the postseason.
The Kings appeared headed for an early exit in the opening round of the playoffs, falling behind the San Jose Sharks 3-0. But LA became one of only four teams to come back from a 3-0 series deficit, winning the next four game to advance to the next round where the faced off against Southern California rival Anaheim.
"It was just a matter of winning one at a time," said Kings radio broadcaster and former Kings player Daryl Evans. "The toughest game was to go into San Jose and win Game 5. They don't get too high, they don't get too low. They trust and believe in each other."
LA claimed the Freeway Faceoff series in seven games before defeating the 2013 Stanley Cup winners Chicago with a trip to the Stanley Cup Final on the line.
Los Angeles was poised for a sweep of the Rangers after winning the first three games, but New York extended the series with a win in Game 4 at Madison Square Garden. The series returned to Staples Center Friday, when the Kings won on defenseman Alec Martinez's goal off a rebound at 14:43 of the second overtime.
The goal sent the Staples Center crowd, already its feet throughout the overtime periods, into a frenzy and gave the franchise its second Stanley Cup since Los Angeles was awarded an NHL team in 1966. For much of the team's history, that moment of elation seemed out of reach as the team endured several seasons of early playoff exits and mediocrity.
Then the "The Great One" arrived in 1988 after a blockbuster trade with the Edmonton Oilers. Wayne Gretzky spent eight years in LA and the team reached the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 1993, but lost to Montreal in five games.
The team hit another dry spell until 2012, when it won the first of two Stanley Cups by defeating the New Jersey Devils 4-2.
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