Hockey fans know all about the Stanley Cup and its uniqueness in all of sports. Holding it aloft as champion is the dream of every hockey player. But many fans also have a personal connection to the cup, originally created in 1892 as the Dominion Cup.
My first encounter was in 1969 through a glass display case at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, when I was at summer hockey school. In 1972, I saw it through tears at ice level as a 14-year-old, watching my beloved New York Rangers lose the sixth game of the finals, 3-0 to the Boston Bruins at Madison Square Garden. My only solace was that Boston was misspelled "Bqstqn" during the engraving. Seven years later, I watched the Rangers lose it again, this time to the Montreal Canadiens, at the old Forum.
Unlike any other professional sports trophy, since the 1950s the Stanley Cup is a true team trophy, touched by every player as it's passed from captain to player to player. Many skate along the glass so fans can reach over and touch it. Once in the locker room, champagne fills the cup.
A team parade with the cup follows, and then the real fun starts. Since the mid-1990s, each player takes the cup home to share with family and friends. Most treat the cup with reverence, but many do some crazy shit. According to Wikipedia:
"Although many players have unofficially spent a day in personal possession of the Cup, in 1995 a tradition started wherein each member of the Cup-winning team is allowed to retain the Cup for a day. It is always accompanied by at least one representative from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Victors of the Cup have used it to baptize their children. Two players (the New York Islanders' Clark Gillies and the Anaheim Ducks' Sean O'Donnell) even allowed their dogs to eat out of the Cup.And that's not the half of it. Read "Why is the Stanley Cup in Mario Lemieux's Swimming Pool?" for the rest.
The Rangers' fateful relationship with the cup is rife with curses. Again, according to Wikipedia:
"During the 1940–41 season, the mortgage on the Rangers' home arena, the third Madison Square Garden (built in 1925), was paid off. Hence, the management of the Madison Square Garden Corporation symbolically burned the mortgage in the bowl of the Cup. This led some hockey fans to believe that the Cup, which is regarded almost as a sacred object, had been "desecrated," leading the "hockey gods" to place a curse on the Rangers."That all changed in 1994. I didn't get to that June's decisive game 7 at Madison Square Garden, but later that summer the cup, the Hart, Vezina and Calder trophies and many more were on display at Grand Central Terminal. It was still a thrill.
1 comment:
Nice post Will. I endured the lean years with the Rangers, and was there in 1994 when they finally raised the Cup.
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