My Day With Stanley

SCOTT NIEDERMAYER
Ducks defenseman

Niedermayer won the Cup three times with the Devils, in 1995, 2000, and '03, each time bringing it back home to Cranbrook, B.C. (pop: 18,500). "I take it around town, and that fills up most of my day," he says. In 2000, two months after giving his son Logan a perch atop the trophy (above, with Scott and wife, Lisa) he took it up 9,300 feet to Fisher Peak overlooking Cranbrook. And in '03 Niedermayer and Stanley visited soot-covered firefighters battling a wildfire. "You want to share it with people," Niedermayer says. Not everyone is comfortable around the Cup. At a family barbecue in '03, as various Niedermayers embraced or smooched Stanley, Scott's brother Rob—now his Ducks teammate—stuck to NHL superstition. "I tried to stay away from it," Rob says. "If you don't win it, you don't touch it."

MARTIN GERBER
Senators backup goalie
The Cup went farther afield in the hands of Gerber, a native of Switzerland who won it last season with the Hurricanes. On July 30, Gerber met the Cup at the Zurich airport and took it on a tour that included a boat ride on Lake Lucerne and a celebration at a hotel in Gerber's hometown of Langnau, where hundreds lined up to get their photo taken with hockey's holy grail. Finally, Gerber took the Cup to a 400-year-old wine cellar, where, he says, he drank "lots" of wine out of it. The revelries ended at 3:30 a.m. when Stanley left to catch a flight to Ukraine to meet up with Gerber's teammate Anton Babchuk. "You start to feel like it belongs to you and you should have it longer," says Gerber. "Once you have a taste of it, you really want it back."

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