ANNAPOLIS http://www.officialblackhawksproshop.com/authentic-adidas-anthony-duclair-jersey , Md. (AP) Twenty years after a cereal box changed her life, Meghan Duggan is pictured on one.When the United States won the gold medal in 1998 at the first Olympics with women’s hockey, an 11-year-old Duggan met Gretchen Ulion and got the forward to autograph her Wheaties box and still has it in her parents’ house and a copy of their photo together with sister Katelyn on her phone.After winning gold at the Pyeongchang Games, the 30-year-old captain is featured on her own cereal box as the attention flows for the latest U.S. women’s hockey champions.”We’re just taking in the win,” Duggan said at the NHL Stadium Series game at Navy between the Washington Capitals and Toronto Maple Leafs. ”We were out in L.A. on `Ellen’ and coming and being a part of all these big NHL games and things like that, we’ve got some stuff coming up in New York City next week, which will be really fun.”Appearing on the ”Today” show and Ellen DeGeneres’ show and being feted at Los Angeles Kings and Tampa Bay Lightning games and then outdoors at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium is an impressive victory tour.The next step is for Duggan, shootout hero Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and their teammates to extend the traditional 15 minutes of fame and sustain the kind of long-lasting stardom that soccer player Mia Hamm, basketball player Lisa Leslie and other previous U.S. Olympic gold medal and World Cup winners were able to generate.A cereal box is a nice start, and Duggan and several teammates have endorsement deals with Dunkin’ Donuts with more opportunities on the horizon.”Some of us that are out of college can capitalize on the opportunities,” Monique Lamoureux-Morando said. ”Hopefully exposure for one of us is exposure for all of us and it helps grow the game. If someone gets an amazing opportunity that a lot of people are a part of and get to see, then it benefits all of us.”Agent Brant Feldman, who represents Duggan and the Lamoureux twins, is trying to get his clients mainstream attention beyond hockey. Hilary Knight was the only player not at the outdoor game, but she had a great reason: She appeared on ”Saturday Night Live” in exactly the kind of mainstream spot that could make the gold medalists true household names.Around hockey, they’re very well-known, taking photos with Navy Midshipmen and youth players and drawing chants of ”U-S-A! U-S-A!” from tailgating fans in the parking lot Saturday before the NHL Stadium Series game. Capitals defenseman John Carlson said he and his teammates were watching closely during the Olympics.”It was cool to see the fans’ reaction to them,” Carlson said. ”They’ve been, especially the women’s team has been doing a lot of stuff media-wise throughout the country but also in DC the past couple of days. So to see the rise they got out of a lot of fans and all that kind of stuff throughout the area was really cool.”U.S. players earned headlines in a non-Olympic year when they threatened to boycott the world championships on home ice and came to an agreement on a better contract with USA Hockey.The deal allows players to make up to $129,000 in Olympic years when combined with contributions from the U.S. Olympic Committee – the kind of living wage previous generations of players couldn’t earn.”It’s a great step for our sport,” Lamoureux-Davidson said. ”That’s going to help support our team. … Sponsorships, if those come, that’s great and that’s supplemental income, but what we were able to create with USA Hockey is the biggest step.”The next step for players could include speaking engagements along with some more endorsement deals. But they hope for a bigger change: one professional women’s league in North America instead of the competing Canadian Women’s Hockey League and National Women’s Hockey League.”They currently don’t work together,” Lamoureux-Morando said. ”It’s two completely different entities. So I think moving forward, there needs to be some sort of collaboration, whether they merge or start working together. There needs to move forward in that direction.”It appears that’s a cause that players want to use their platform to promote. They’d also like to spur further growth of women’s hockey across the U.S. like Ulion and the 1998 team did.”That team, those girls, lit the fire in my heart to want to compete for my country and to want to play on this team,” Duggan said.”Fast-forward 20 years to have the opportunity to really inspire the next generation or to have little girls see that photo or see that Kellogg’s cereal box or see what our team did and want to dream big, it fills my heart. It’s why I am who I am and why I’m here today is because of those girls, and we definitely want to have that impact on the next generation.”— LAS VEGAS (AP) Gerard Gallant took time out from preparing for the Stanley Cup finals to watch a Little League game this week, something that might be surprising to those who think there is little in Las Vegas besides showgirls, craps tables and nightclubs.There is a real city beyond the Las Vegas Strip, though, and that isn’t a surprise to the Vegas Golden Knights coach or the rest of a team that has embraced a city that has eagerly embraced them back.They play here, and they also live here. Turns out hockey works in the desert – even for real hockey guys.”It’s been, for all of us, one of the neatest experiences of our lifetime,” general manager George McPhee said. ”Maybe the neatest, most unique experience. Las Vegas has been a wonderful place to live and work.”The love affair between a city and its new team wasn’t totally unexpected. Las Vegas was, after all, a town starved for major league sports.But no one could have expected a hockey team would also help a city deal with its grief after a gunman killed 58 people on the Las Vegas strip just days before the team’s home opener.They’ve done that and more http://www.officialavalanche.com/authentic-adidas-patrick-roy-jersey , thrilling a town that’s hard to impress on a remarkable run to the finals in their first year of existence.”We knew we couldn’t heal everyone,” goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said. ”But we wanted to give (the city) something to cheer for, to be proud of their team.”They call themselves the ”Golden Misfits” because they all ended up in Las Vegas after being discarded by other teams. Even Gallant was unceremoniously dumped from his last job, kicked off the team bus after being fired by the Florida Panthers.They came to this gambling city wanting to be wanted again. And a city that waited 112 years for a major sports franchise to call its own responded with open arms.The games are all sellouts, of course. But the practices have also become events to see and be seen, with hundreds of fans crowding the team’s practice rink in the planned community of Summerlin where most players live.And everywhere people wear Golden Knights hats and shirts and talk about strange things like icing and forechecking.”I see it every day of practice when you got 800 people watching our practices,” Gallant said. ”It’s definitely not one on one with people, but you see the fan support that we get is unbelievable. They love our players, they love our team, and they love what’s going on, and I know our players appreciate the things they do for us.”One of those players showed that Thursday night at another Little League game. Alex Tuch was watching the son of an assistant coach play, but a lot of other people at the ballpark were watching him.As word spread that a Golden Knights player was in the stands, kids of all ages surrounded Tuch, who graciously obliged one picture request after another.For some, the bond between city and team started developing when billionaire Bill Foley plunked down $500 million and Las Vegas was awarded an expansion franchise. For others, it began when Foley announced the team would be called the Golden Knights and started selling season tickets.For many, though, it came when Deryk Engelland – a Las Vegas resident for more than a decade – stood on the ice before the first home game with hardly a dry eye in the crowd. It was nine days after the massacre of fans at a country music concert just down the street from the T-Mobile Arena where the Knights play, and emotions were raw.England’s speech was short, his message poignant.”I know how special this city is,” he told the crowd. ”To the families and friends of the victims, know we will do everything we can to help you and our city heal.”We are Vegas Strong.”Engelland, a defenseman, had scored only 22 goals in eight years in the NHL prior to that game. But he scored one that night and, for a brief moment at least, gave a grieving city something to cheer about.And it was Engelland who was chosen on a team with no captains to accept the trophy for winning the Western Conference finals from NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly.”After Oct. 1, those first games … you want to play for the city, the people that were affected by it,” Engelland said. ”To make this run, it’s awesome for us, but it all comes back to the city and the people affected by that.”In a city that values winners, it helps that the team McPhee put together is a big winner. That was unexpected by most in hockey, who figured the Knights would finish last in their division like most expansion teams do, even though the NHL made sure they had a lot of good players to choose from.Now they’re playing for one of the great trophies in sports: the Stanley Cup.”It’s been fun to watch,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said. ”Nobody could’ve anticipated it. Our goal was that they be playing meaningful games in March and April, and if they were lucky, they might make the playoffs. Whoever could have predicted that they’d be on this run?”Not many, and that includes the bookies on the Las Vegas Strip. They made the Knights as much as a 500-1 underdog to win the Stanley Cup, and will likely lose several million dollars if it actually happens.It just might, and they don’t seem to care.The bookies live here, too. And they want to see the Stanley Cup paraded down the Las Vegas Strip.—-AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno and AP stringer W.G. Ramirez contributed to this report.—-Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg