Up Close and Personal With Lord Stanley’s Cup

Stanley Cup on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame

It was induction weekend at the Hockey Hall of Fame so the Stanley Cup got moved from its normal location to a random location where we found it. Interesting fact, when they run out of room on a band, they remove the oldest level, stamp it flat and put it in storage to be replaced by a blank band. Always wondered about that with trophies.

From Wikipedia:

The Stanley Cup (FrenchLa Coupe Stanley) 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 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) considers it to be one of the “most important championships available to the sport”.[1] 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.[2] 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, professional ice hockey organizations National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) 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.