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Crown jewel Stanley Cup is the people's trophy
Posted: Tuesday May 30, 2000 06:50 PM
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Skilled athletes fight over it as if it cost $48 million, not $48, then cry when they finally hold it. It weighs but 35 pounds, but winning it requires heavy lifting -- namely, two months of every-other-day competition in which noses, wrists, fingers and hearts are broken. It is the Stanley Cup. Hundreds of highly paid players spend nine months every year just for the thrill of lifting it for a few seconds. Millions more pay large sums of money to watch the quest. As the Dallas Stars began defense of their Stanley Cup championship on Tuesday night against the New Jersey Devils, every player had but one thought: Hoisting the most prized trophy in sports above their heads. "It's something we dream about from the time we go outside and start knocking snow around with a stick," Stars forward Mike Keane said.
There are dozens of Super Bowl, NBA and World Series trophies on display -- each winner gets one each year -- and how many people can describe what they look like? But even sports fans with a minimal interest in hockey know Lord Stanley's Cup. Many long to hold it, to have their picture snapped with it, to drink from its bowl. There is a special aura to the cup that transcends the very game it represents. "It is why you play the game," Carolina Hurricanes forward Ron Francis said after winning two cups in Pittsburgh. One reason the Stanley Cup is so prized is the energy and effort needed to earn it. The Super Bowl lasts but three hours, the World Series no longer than seven games. But winning the Stanley Cuprequires part of April, all of May and part of June, and that after a six-month regular season. Even then, working a regular shift might not be enough. Last year, it took the Stars three overtimes, and more than six hours, to win the 16th and final game needed to make the cup theirs. And, unlike the Super Bowl trophy, the Stanley Cup is apt to wind up at your neighborhood tavern, a strip mall, even a strip club. Each winning team gains possession of the cup for several weeks, and each player can show it off for one day, in almost any manner he chooses. Thousands have quaffed beer or champagne from it. It has been the centerpiece of many a backyard cookout. Once, it was left along a Canadian roadside; another time, it was accidentally kicked into a canal. Some players spend hours alone with it, others share it with every acquaintance. It has been displayed everywhere from Regina to Rochester to Russia, with many stops in between. Along the way, it picked up scratches, dents and dings that, each time, were carefully removed. After being paraded on stage at an Edmonton strip club and dunked in Mario Lemieux's swimming pool, the NHL began assigning a security officer to accompany it on its rounds. The cup itself has undergone numerous renovations. It has added eight layers of rings since Frederick Arthur, Lord Stanley of Preston, donated it in 1893 to serve as the symbol of hockey supremacy. The first cup, originally called the Dominion Challenge Cup, was retired in 1969 because it had become too brittle -- partly because players once didn't wait for an engraver to add their names, but did so themselves with a knife or a nail. Though many fans don't know it, there are two Stanley Cups. One, a duplicate created in 1993, is displayed at the Hockey Hall of Fame when the original trophy is on the road, as it was Tuesday in Newark. The original cup (actually, the one fashioned in 1958 so that the winners would be represented on a single trophy) is always paraded on the ice by the Stanley Cup champion. The top portion, or the cup itself, is a copy of that donated by Lord Stanley. "The NHL is very proud of the Stanley Cup and what it entails," said Devils coach Larry Robinson, who won seven cups as a layer. "Anybody who has ever had a chance to see it, hold it, raise it will never forget it."
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