Islanders fans crash rivals' Stanley Cup celebration
The Hurricanes won, and that's when the guys' wild night with the champs began.
For the last four years, Bellmore's Andrew Metelitz and his buddy, Alex Ridell, from Florida, have attended the Stanley Cup Finals.
Every year they wear their Islanders jerseys and have one goal: get as close to the Cup as possible.
"Wherever it is, we are going to be with the Cup, or the Cup is going to find us," said Metelitz.
This year, the Stanley Cup Finals pitted the Carolina Hurricanes against the Las Vegas Golden Knights.
The guys hit the jackpot by scoring tickets for the Game 6 in Las Vegas.
The Hurricanes won, and that's when the guys' wild night with the champs began.
Andrew said they found an elevator that led to the ice, where the Hurricanes postgame celebration was underway.
He tried to sneak on but was stopped by a security guard who told him he needed a yellow "friends and family" bracelet to join the celebration.
Andrew told the security guard he forgot his and said he'd be back with the bracelet.
So, he snuck off.
Then, he took a piece of a yellow streamer he snagged from a pregame party outside the arena, ripped it, folded it and made a "yellow bracelet."
"I tucked it in, right underneath my watch. I licked it a little bit so it could stay," said Andrew. And it worked!
Andrew got onto the ice, where he posed for pictures and chatted with the players, including former Islander Mike Reilly. Eventually security busted them, so the guys left the arena.
But as luck would have it a few hours later, they spotted the Hurricanes and their families parading the Stanley Cup down the Vegas strip.
So, they started following the group.
At one point, Andrew said someone asked which player he was with. So, he said he was a cousin of one of the players, but no one questioned him any further.
Andrew even had an Islanders hat on the whole time, and he said no one noticed or cared. They just marched with the group.
"Fans were high fiving me as if I was a player. We acted like we belonged," said Andrew, who loved the Islanders so much that his painting company is called "Islander Painting."
Eventually, the Hurricanes ended up at the Stanley Cup bash at a club inside Caeser's Palace Resort.
Andrew said he thought this was where their charade would end.
"But they looked at our IDs and no questions asked, they let us right in," he said.
Andrew and Alex spent the rest of the night partying with Taylor Hall, Seth Jarvis, Jordan Staal and the rest of the champs. They danced with them.
They took photos with them.
Andrew said the night "was like a dream."
"I felt like I genuinely had won the Stanley Cup," he said while reliving the night.
He said the best moment came when the Hurricanes players allowed him to drink beer out of the Stanley Cup.
"It's on my shirt and going down my beard. It's just glorious," Andrew said.
"It felt like they took me in as their own, as a player and shared their best moment of their life with me," he said.
And so, Andrew will always be a die-hard Islanders fan.
But now he said the Hurricanes will always have a special place in his heart.
