Home : Ice Hockey :

Stanley Cup

It may be more than a century old, but the Stanley Cup can still maintain a schedule that makes other silver bowls of its vintage melt away into so many charm bracelets. It's on the road nearly three hundred days a year visiting locales as divergent and exotic as the White House, Red Square, the Rocky Mountains, and the Muskoka Lakes in Ontario cottage country.

Originally purchased for 10 guineas, the equivalent of $50, it's now insured for $75,000. But in reality, since it is the most prized and recognized trophy in team sports, it is - to borrow a popular advertising catch phrase - priceless. In the mid-1960s, the original bowl on top of the Cup was replaced with an exact duplicate made by a Montreal silversmith, Carl Petersen. The original bowl was deemed to be too brittle to withstand the rigorous trials and tribulations the Cup was forced to go through every year. It was "officially" retired in 1970 and now rests in a vault at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

The rest of the Cup has gone through numerous changes as well. Most of the original metal bands that make up the base of the Cup have been retired to make room for new names-of the teams and the players who have won the prized Mug. Since 1958 the base of the Stanley Cup has consisted of five bands, each containing enough room for 13 teams which includes a list of players, coaches, and other key personnel, which means a player's and his team's name will stay on the Cup for 64 years. The next band will be removed in 2005, and with it will go the names of those players who won the Cup from 1941 to 1953 - including Hall of Famers such as Toronto's Teeder Kennedy, Boston's Bill Cowley, Jack Stewart of Detroit, and Montreal's Bill Duran.

Many fascinating details are part of the trophy's lore, including the following:

1. There are numerous spelling errors on the Cup, such as the New York "Ilanders," Toronto Maple "Leaes," "Bqstqn" Bruins, and four different misspellings of the first name of the Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante.
2. Bob Gainey's name on the 1975-76 panel is spelled without an e.
3. Eddie Gerard, the Montreal Maroons general manager and coach, is missing an r in his last name on the 1925-26 team.
4. On the 1937-38 panel of the Chicago Blackhawks, Pete Palangio shows up twice, once as himself and again simply as "Palagio."
5. Hal Winkler's name is on the Cup with Boston in 1929, though he didn't play a game with the Bruins that season.
6. Danny Grant's and Ken Dryden's names were both put on the Cup before they won the Calder Trophy.
7. Gary Bauman's name is on the Cup in 1965 and 1966 despite his not playing a game in either of those years.

Approximately a thousand players, coaches, and team officials - including numerous women executives - have had their names engraved on the Cup. The first three women to have their names inscribed on the Holy Grail were Marguerite Norris, president of the Detroit Red Wings championship team in 1954 and 1955; Sonia Scurfield, a part owner of the 1989 Stanley Cup champion Calgary Flames; and Marie Denise DeBartolo York, the president of the 1991 champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

Then there was the Pocklington mishap. After the Oilers won the Cup for the first time in 1984, their owner, Peter Pocklington, decided to have his father's name inscribed on the Cup. When NHL officials discovered the unauthorized addition, they had the senior Pocklington's name crossed out with X's.

When the NHL decided to make a perfect replica of the Cup for display purposes at the Hockey Hall of Fame, they corrected most of the old spelling errors, including the X'ed-out name. Looking for the X's is the simplest way 4 to differentiate between the two versions.

Then there was the Ed Olczyk debate and the subsequent by-law change: After the New York Rangers captured the Cup in 1994, the team made a special request to Commissioner Gary Bettman to have Ed Olczyk's name engraved on the Cup. Although Olczyk didn't meet the requirements-at least 41 games with the club or one game played in the Finals-he had won the Rangers Good Guy award and was only out of the roster because of injury. Commissioner Bettman agreed, and since then some players have received the commissioner's okay to have their name on the Cup because extenuating circumstances prevented them from being available to play.

Lester Patrick is gone. So are other Hall-of-Famers such as Ace Bailey, Lionel Conacher, and Syd Howe. One day Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard, and Bobby Hull will follow. Why? Because in 1992, after every last spot on the Stanley Cup had been filled, something had to be done to remedy the situation. Rather than tinker with the size and shape of a trophy that had become so familiar to hockey fans around the world, it was decided that an old band would have to be removed to make room for a new one. So, when the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 1992, the top band from the base of the trophy was retired and placed on permanent display at the Hockey Hall of Fame. It contained the names of the teams and players who had won the Cup between 1928 and 1940.

When the available space is once again filled, by the champions of 2004, the band containing the winners from 1941 to 1953 will join the other retired pieces of the Stanley Cup. Over the years, bands will continue to be retired and new ones will take their place. It's part of the evolution not only of the Cup but also of the sport itself.

In March of 2003, the Ottawa Senators celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Canadian capital's first Stanley Cup championship by raising two new Stanley Cup banners signifying Ottawa victories in 1906 and 1910. This decision was somewhat controversial, in light of the fact that Ottawa has not often received credit for these victories.

Official records have traditionally listed Ottawa with nine Stanley Cup championships: 1903, 1904, 1905, 1909, 1911, 1920, 1921, 1923, and 1927. However, during the so-called "Challenge Era" in Stanley Cup history, when the cup was a challenge trophy, the

Ottawa team did successfully defend its titles in both 1906 and 1910, though they were ultimately defeated by the end of both seasons. Still, the Senators have decided to honor these two championship teams and now there are 11 Stanley Cup banners hanging from the rafters of Ottawa's Corel Centre. Of course, the current NHL version of the Senators has no real link to these early-era ancestors!

The original Ottawa team did, in fact, have its victories of 1906 and 1910 engraved onto the Stanley Cup, but there are some champions from the early Challenge Era that never seemed to bother. The Montreal Wanderers of 1906 and 1907 proudly carved their name right on the old silver bowl. In fact, the Wanderers of 1907 were the first team to engrave the names of all their players and executives onto the Cup (this did not become a regular practice until 1924), but they did nothing to commemorate their victory of 1908. By this time, all of the spaces on the original trophy had been filled, but even after a new band was added to the Cup in 1909, the Wanderers did not engrave their name as the new champions of 1910. When Ottawa won the Cup again in 1911, the team did not engrave its name either. Things got back on track with the Quebec Bulldogs' victory in 1912, but soon there was trouble of a different sort.

The Ottawa Senators (1915), the Portland Rosebuds (1916), and the Vancouver Millionaires (1918) all put their team names on the Stanley Cup - even though they had not officially won it. Times were changing, and although all three of these teams could have claimed the Cup under earlier interpretations of the rules, each of them lost the final playoff series that they needed to win it that year.

By 1918, all the room for names on the Stanley Cup had again been filled. No more names were engraved until 1924, when the Montreal Canadiens added a brand-new band that included the names of all their players, coaches, and front office personnel.

At Long Last

Since 1924, both individual names and team names have always been included on the Stanley Cup. Many players who missed having their names on the Mug during their careers later had them added as a coach, scout, or administrator.

Dan Diamond, James Duplacey and Eric Zweig. . Andrews McMeel Publishing. 2003.

Ice Hockey Movies

Slap Shot (1977) The tableau of the Hanson Brothers — dried blood, broken glasses, blank expressions — standing at rapt attention for the national anthem is priceless.

Stars: Paul Newman, Strother Martin, Michael Ontkean
Director: George Roy Hill

Why It's No. 1: When you talk about hilariously foul-mouthed movies, this comedy about a hapless minor league hockey team is the gold standard. Newman's hockey coach, Reggie Dunlop, revives a deadbeat minor league team by recruiting the hard-checking, high-sticking Hanson brothers. Eyes obscured by taped-up glasses, fists swathed in tinfoil, these geeky goons revel in dirty play. So does the audience. There's cursing, skating, cursing, fighting, cursing, womanizing and … well, don't even think about watching it on network TV. Buy it or rent it tonight. It's the only Hall of Famer in the bunch.

Memorable Moment: It's the championship game. To the disgust of team pacifist Ned Braden (Ontkean), the Charlestown Chiefs, the league's toughest team, are duking it out on the ice with their arch rivals. Then, to the blaring strains of David Rose's The Stripper, Ontkean brings things to a jaw-dropping halt with the unlikeliest of protests.

They Said It: "You cheap sonofabitch! Those guys are retards!" — Coach Reggie Dunlop (Newman) to the Chiefs' owner (Martin) upon meeting his new players, the geeky Hansons.

Look For: Real-life brothers — and hockey players — Jeff and Steve Carlson, who play two of the three Hanson brothers. A third brother, Jack Carlson, was replaced in the movie after being called up to the World Hockey Association.

Runner-Up: Mystery, Alaska (1999). A solid Russell Crowe leads a small-town amateur team against the New York Rangers in this underrated comedy. Formulaic in a Rocky sort of way, but a nice film nonetheless. Russell Crowe acts well, and you get a good sense of life in a small, cold, hockey-crazy town.

Contenders:

• Miracle (2004): The saga of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's "Miracle on Ice"--a victory over the U.S.S.R.'s highly skilled veterans on the road to the gold medal during the winter games in Lake Placid, New York--is vividly brought to life in this inspiring true story. Kurt Russell turns in a commanding performance as Herb Brooks, the college coach who used tough, unorthodox methods to get his young players to bond together in order to face off against the mighty Soviets.
• Strange Brew (1983): There's a lot of beer in this movie, and Rick Moranis is funny when he's not annoying. Hockey serves as a metaphor for both good and evil ... why, of course!
• Youngblood (1986): Fans of "Rocky" and "The Mighty Ducks" will enjoy this hard-hitting tale starring Rob Lowe as a naive farm boy learning about manhood on the hockey rink.
• The Mighty Ducks (1992): A bunch of cute little guys (including Emilio Estevez) on skates.

---

top of page

back a page