The Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff winner.
It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, and the IIHF considers it to be one of the most important championships available to the sport.
The trophy was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, who donated it as an award to Canada's top-ranking amateur ice hockey club. The entire Stanley family supported the sport, the sons and daughters all playing and promoting the game.
The first Cup was awarded in 1893 to Montreal Hockey Club, and winners from 1893 to 1914 were determined by challenge games and league play. Professional teams first became eligible to challenge for the Stanley Cup in 1906.
In 1915, the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), the two main professional ice hockey organizations, reached a gentlemen's agreement in which their respective champions would face each other annually for the Stanley Cup. It was established as the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 and then the de jure NHL championship prize in 1947.
There are actually three Stanley Cups: the original bowl of the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, the authenticated Presentation Cup, and the spelling-corrected Permanent Cup on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
While the NHL has maintained control over the trophy itself and its associated trademarks, the NHL does not actually own the trophy but uses it by agreement with the two Canadian trustees of the cup.
The NHL has registered trademarks associated with the name and likeness of the Stanley Cup, although there has been dispute whether the league has the right to own trademarks associated with a trophy that it does not own.
The original bowl was made of silver
and is 18.5 centimetres high and 29 centimetres wide. The current
Stanley Cup is topped with a copy of the original bowl, made of a silver
and nickel alloy. It has a height of 89.54 centimetres and weighs 15.5
kilograms. A new Stanley Cup is not made each year, unlike the trophies
awarded by the other major professional sports leagues of North America.
The winners originally kept it until a new champion was crowned, but
winning teams currently get the Stanley Cup during the summer and a
limited number of days during the season.
More information: NHL
Every year since 1924, a select portion of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff names are engraved on its bands, which is unusual among trophies. However, there is not enough room to include all the players and non-players, so some names must be omitted. Between 1924 and 1940, a new band was added almost every year that the trophy was awarded, earning the nickname Stovepipe Cup due to the unnatural height of all the bands. In 1947, the cup size was reduced, but not all the large rings were the same size.
In 1958, the modern one-piece Cup was designed with a five-band barrel which could contain 13 winning teams per band. The oldest band is removed when the bottom band is full and preserved in the Hockey Hall of Fame in order to prevent the Stanley Cup from growing, and a new blank band added to the bottom. The first winning team engraved on the newest band is thus, in theory, displayed on the trophy for the next 65 years. It has been referred to as The Cup, Lord Stanley's Cup, The Holy Grail, or facetiously as Lord Stanley's Mug.
The Stanley Cup is surrounded by numerous legends and traditions, the oldest of which is the winning team drinking champagne from it.
Since the 1914–15 season, the Cup has been won a combined 103 times by 20 current NHL teams and 5 defunct teams. It was not awarded in 1919 because of the Spanish flu epidemic and in 2005 because of the 2004–05 NHL lockout. It was held by nine different teams between 1893 and 1914.
The Montreal Canadiens have won it a record 24 times and are the most recent Canadian-based team to win it, doing so in 1993; the Detroit Red Wings have won it 11 times, the most of any United States-based NHL team, most recently in 2008. More than three thousand different names, including the names of over thirteen hundred players, had been engraved on it by 2017.
More information: NHL
After the Lord Stanley of Preston
was appointed by Queen Victoria as Governor General of Canada on June
11, 1888, he and his family became highly enthusiastic about ice hockey.
Stanley was first exposed to the game at Montreal's 1889 Winter
Carnival, where he saw the Montreal Victorias play the Montreal Hockey
Club. The Montreal Gazette reported that he expressed his great delight
with the game of hockey and the expertise of the players. During that
time, organized ice hockey in Canada was still in its infancy and only
Montreal and Ottawa had anything resembling leagues.
Soon afterwards, Stanley purchased what is frequently described as a decorative punch bowl, but which silver expert John Culme identified as a rose bowl, made in Sheffield, England, and sold by London silversmith G. R. Collis and Company, for ten guineas, equal to ten and a half pounds sterling, US$48.67, which is equal to $1,385 in 2019 dollars. He had the words Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup engraved on one side of the outside rim, and From Stanley of Preston on the other side. The name Stanley Cup was given to it as early as May 1, 1893, when an Ottawa Journal article used the name as a title.
The Cup trustees issued more specific rules on how the trophy should be defended and awarded:
-The Cup is automatically awarded to the team that wins the title of the previous Cup champion's league, without the need for any other special extra contest.
-Challengers for the Cup must be from senior hockey associations, and must have won their league championship. Challengers will be recognized in the order in which their request is received.
-The challenge games (where the Cup could change leagues) are to be decided either in a one-game affair, a two-game total goals' affair, or the best of three series, to the benefit of both teams involved. All matches are to take place on the home ice of the champions, although specific dates and times have to be approved by the trustees.
-Ticket receipts from the challenge games are to be split equally between both teams.
-If the two competing clubs cannot agree to a referee, the trustees will appoint one, and the two teams shall cover the expenses equally.
-A league could not challenge for the Cup twice in one season.
Stanley never saw a Stanley Cup championship game, nor did he ever present the Cup. Although his term as Governor General ended in September 1893, he was forced to return to England on July 15.
More information: Everything Hockey
Growing up in Canada,
most kids from Canada dream of playing in the NHL,
and they also hope one day to be on a Stanley Cup team.
That was a big goal.
Bobby Orr
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