Lightning take Cup for rough boat ride

For the third time in 10 months, a Tampa Bay team revelled in a boat parade to celebrate its victory in the quest for a championship trophy.

And also for the third time, that trophy was not exactly treated with the utmost delicacy.

On Monday, the Stanley Cup had by far the roughest go of it. At some point during the Tampa Bay Lightning's beer-soaked celebration of its triumph last week over the Montreal Canadiens, the cherished trophy received a large dent.

An image that went viral showed Lightning forward Pat Maroon holding a damaged Cup.

It wasn't initially clear what happened to the Stanley Cup. It reportedly appeared intact during the latter stages of the celebration, after Lightning players and staff had left the water and headed to a park for a planned rally that was cut short because of weather befitting the team's name.

The Cup will be sent to Montreal for repairs — leading to inevitable jokes about how that is as close as fans there will come to it — and the Lightning will get it back in approximately a week, according to reports, to resume the team's celebration. Per NHL tradition, championship squads get 100 days with the Cup, allowing each significant contributor to spend a day with the trophy.

The Stanley Cup, or at least the people running its official Twitter account, knew that danger could be in the air come Monday.

“FYI I'm too heavy to throw,” the account tweeted last week at Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady.

That was a reference to the Bucs' boat parade in February, after they won the Super Bowl. At one point during that water-borne bacchanal, Brady tossed the Lombardi Trophy over a stretch of Hillsborough River to teammate Cameron Brate, who was on another boat. Naturally, Brady completed the pass, but likely not without some agitation on the part of team and NFL officials.

In October, when the Lightning celebrated its pandemic-delayed 2020 NHL title, players let some fans drink from the Cup despite the dangers of the still-raging coronavirus. Efforts to encourage social distancing during that event, including staging much of it on water, did not stop throngs from crowding along the riverbanks to see the parade.

Pandemic-related restrictions had been long since relaxed in Florida by Monday, but the tradition of holding boat parades for championship teams seems to have firmly taken hold. And as with the two previous celebrations, this one could have easily been called a booze cruise.