Stanley Cup


The Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, and the International Ice Hockey Federation 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 the 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 and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, the two main professional ice hockey organizations, reached an 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 whenever the Presentation Cup is not available. 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 as to 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 high and in diameter. 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 and weighs. Like the Grey Cup, and unlike the trophies awarded by the other major professional sports leagues of North America, a new Stanley Cup is not made every year. 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. 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. Every 13 years when the bottom band of the Stanley Cup is filled with names of champions, the top band is removed and retired to be displayed in the vault of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. The four bands below it are slid up one place 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 106 times by 21 current NHL teams and five teams no longer in existence. 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. The current holders of the Cup are the Florida Panthers after their victories in 2024 and 2025, the former being their first in franchise history. More than 3,000 different names, including the names of over 1,300 players, had been engraved on it by 2017.

History

Origins

After Frederick Stanley, 1st Baron 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.
Stanley's entire family became active in ice hockey. Two of his sons, Arthur and Algernon, formed a new team called the Ottawa Rideau Hall Rebels. Arthur also played a key role in the formation of what later became known as the Ontario Hockey Association, and became the founder of ice hockey in Great Britain. Arthur and Algernon persuaded their father to donate a trophy to be "an outward and visible sign of the hockey championship". Stanley sent the following message to the victory celebration held on March 18, 1892, at Ottawa's Russell House Hotel for the three-time champion Ottawa Hockey Club:

I have for some time been thinking that it would be a good thing if there were a challenge cup which should be held from year to year by the champion hockey team in the Dominion .
There does not appear to be any such outward sign of a championship at present, and considering the general interest which matches now elicit, and the importance of having the game played fairly and under rules generally recognized, I am willing to give a cup which shall be held from year to year by the winning team.
I am not quite certain that the present regulations governing the arrangement of matches give entire satisfaction, and it would be worth considering whether they could not be arranged so that each team would play once at home and once at the place where their opponents hail from.

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 $ in 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.
Originally, Stanley intended that the Cup should be awarded to the top amateur hockey team in Canada, to be decided by the acceptance of a challenge from another team. He made five preliminary regulations:

  1. The winners shall return the Cup in good order when required by the trustees so that it may be handed over to any other team which may win it.
  2. Each winning team, at its own expense, may have the club name and year engraved on a silver ring fitted on the Cup.
  3. The Cup shall remain a challenge cup, and should not become the property of one team, even if won more than once.
  4. The trustees shall maintain absolute authority in all situations or disputes over the winner of the Cup.
  5. If one of the existing trustees resigns or drops out, the remaining trustee shall nominate a substitute.
Stanley appointed Sheriff John Sweetland and Philip D. Ross as trustees of the Cup. Sweetland and Ross first presented the trophy in 1893 to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association on behalf of the affiliated Montreal Hockey Club, the champions of the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada, since they "defeated all comers during the late season, including the champions of the Ontario Association". Sweetland and Ross also believed that the AHAC was the top league, and as first-place finishers in the AHAC, Montreal was the best team in Canada. Naturally, the Ottawas were upset by the decision because there had been no challenge games scheduled and because the trustees failed to convey the rules on how the Cup was to be awarded prior to the start of the season.
As a result, 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 are to be decided either in a one-game affair, a two-game total goals affair, or a 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.
Lord 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. In April of that year, his older brother Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby died without issue, and Stanley succeeded him as the 16th Earl of Derby.