Stanley Cup is no stranger to damage or rough and tumble adventures
The top prize in hockey has sustained its fair share or dings and dents over the years.
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The Florida Panthers are hardly the first team to play rough with the Stanley Cup.
A team fights that long and that hard to win it, you deserve a chance to celebrate and though it’s made of malleable material (a silver-nickel alloy that can usually be re-shaped) its custodians prefer it be returned in one piece.
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Stanley Cup is no stranger to damage or rough and tumble adventures Back to video
Donated by Lord Stanley of Preston in 1888, some of our favourite tales of when the Cup was runneth over:
CUP GETS ITS KICKS
The 6,400 kilometres the Dawson City Nuggets travelled from the Yukon to Ottawa to challenge for the title in January of 1905 was Cup-worthy in itself, though the Ottawa Silver Seven blew out the weary travelers in a best-of-three series.
After a 23-2 one-sided clincher, the gracious Seven held a banquet for the visitors, with the victorious Bytowners later staggering into the street with their prize. Bets were placed whether one of them could boot the bowl across the Rideau Canal — thankfully frozen over at that time of year — but when it only landed halfway, none of the merrymakers thought to retrieve it.
Next morning, a player was grateful to find it still there.
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FORGETTING SOMETHING?
In 1924, the Cup was abandoned again.
The winning Montreal Canadiens went off to owner Leo Dandurand’s home, but the car carrying the trophy had a flat tire. After getting out to fix it, they forgot they had put the trophy at the side of the road.
HOT STUFF
Twice the Cup has been allegedly burned, once when the 1940 champion New York Rangers ceremoniously set fire to the paid-off mortgage of original Madison Square Garden and during one of Toronto’s championships in the ‘60s during a team bonfire party.
THE TOOTH HURTS
It has been established that the bowl can hold 14 bottles of beer.
But in 1957, Habs legend Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard chipped both of his front teeth while taking an enthusiastic swig.
Other players have been at a loss for words when asked to describe the taste of beer, champagne and alloy after it’s constantly refilled.
CUP-NAPPED
A Montreal fan didn’t take it well when his team failed to win the Cup in 1962.
As it sat in a glass case in the lobby of old Chicago Stadium during the ‘62 playoffs, won the previous year by the Blackhawks, Ken Kilander deftly opened the door, put the Cup on his shoulder and was marching out when arrested.
He later told the judge: “Your Honour, I was simply bringing the Cup back to Montreal where it belongs.”
KID STUFF
One of the oldest Cup traditions is a player’s young child posed in the bowl — but accidents do happen.
When the Leafs won their third straight title in ‘64, team exec Harold Ballard brought the Cup to Red Kelly’s Toronto home as the star split his time as an elected Toronto MP and been called to Ottawa right after beating Detroit.
Conn Kelly, then just a few months old, was positioned in the bowl for a photo and wound up relieving himself, a story Red laughed about for years whenever he saw someone drink from the trophy.
In 2008, Kris Draper’s infant daughter also soiled herself, but the unfazed forward gave the Cup a thorough cleaning and drank from it the same day.
But rest assured of the Cup’s purification: Colorado’s Sylvain Lefebvre was the first of four players to use it as a baptismal font.
POOL PARTY
Silver and chlorine might not be a good mix, but more than once, a Cup handoff at a backyard pool was fumbled.
It rested at the bottom of Mario Lemieux’s pond during a Pittsburgh Penguins party.
“The Cup does not float,” teammate Phil Bourque confirmed.
The first time Florida won it last year, it went to sea on a fishing trip and was used to hold live bait
CHECK YOUR OIL
There was new meaning given to the term “hoisting the Cup” in 1988.
Edmonton car mechanic Al Braun looked up from a fender repair job to see a sheepish looking Oilers official holding the badly dented Cup. Coincidentally, it was the year Oiler captain Wayne Gretzky began the tradition of a team Cup photo at centre ice instead of the crowded dressing roomn.
With the team picture to be taken that day, Braun was asked to put the trophy back into recognizable shape. Braun and two pals put the Cup on a hoist, re-attached the broken base, straightened the bumps and shined it up — for no charge.
RANGER DANGER
In 1994, the NHL was not pleased to put the Cup on display for the draft in Hartford with a decided tilt to one side, the result of late-night carousing by the champion Rangers.
“It looked like someone sat on it,” complained a Hall of Fame official, who re-possessed it from the team until it could be repaired.
”It was dropped multiple times,” former Ranger-turned-Sportsnet Nick Kypreos co-host recalled to us on Thursday. “We got in trouble with the older person from (the league office in Montreal) for letting people grab it by the neck.”
Before accepting an invite from the Mayor’s office to bring it to his house, the team entrusted Kypreos and goalie Glenn Healy with the Cup for a couple of hours. In a police squad car escort, they brought it to Manhattan’s oldest bar, McSorley’s Ale House, a movie locale for Gangs of New York.
“The place went absolute bananas,” Kypreos said in his book, Undrafted. “We barely got through the door before the Cup was taken from our hands and passed through the crowd. Total mayhem.”
HOCKEY TALKY SHOW
David Letterman procured the Cup one year the New York Islanders won it, walking it out for Late Night’s opening.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live, the host and sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez went much further by mixing a giant margarita in the bowl — salt, lime and all — with the help of the Los Angeles Kings’ Conn Smythe Trophy winner Justin Williams and defenceman Alec Martinez.
The foursome then sipped the concoction under the watchful eye of the Hall of Fame’s white-gloved Cup custodian Phil Pritchard.
AVS CUP NICKED
The Cup was damaged on live TV in Colorado’s 2022 celly.
Players were assembled for the traditional centre-ice photo and called Nicolas Aube-Kubel to come over with it, but in his rush, the forward stumbled and dropped it.
“I guess it’s a new record today, five minutes into the presentation,” Pritchard quipped at the time.
Traditionalists often are shocked and dismayed by the trophy’s treatment but, after all, it is known as “the people’s Cup.”
The current Lord Edward Stanley, who visited the Hall of Fame for the first time last year, told Postmedia he has no issue with how the winners party with his great-great-great grandfather’s donation to the sport.
“I think it’s very cool. I really enjoyed hearing the stories,” he said. “The love is in the heritage”
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