Cup runneth over with strange contents
Capitals have put a baby, a dog and caviar in it
WASHINGTON — During the past six weeks, the Stanley Cup has travelled from Washington to Russia and the Czech Republic, throughout Canada and the Midwestern United States. The trophy is headed back to Europe this week, where Capitals players Lars Eller, Andre Burakovsky, Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov, among others, will each spend one day with the Cup as part of a tradition formalized by the title-winning New Jersey Devils in 1995.
At each stop along the Stanley Cup’s summer victory tour, Capitals players and staff have filled the trophy’s bowl, which is engraved with the names of the 1907 champion Montreal Wanderers, with all sorts of things, from caviar and cereal to babies and good old fashioned beer.
Monday was 26-year-old Devante Smith-Pelly’s day with the Cup and the Scarborough, Ont., native, who scored seven goals during the playoffs, upped the ante for his European teammates’ upcoming plans by putting a good dog atop Lord Stanley’s trophy.
Here’s a look at what else the Capitals have put in the Stanley Cup this summer:
CAVIAR
Last month, Alex Ovechkin brought the Stanley Cup to Moscow’s Red Square and the Dynamo hockey facility where he played as a teenager. The Capitals’ captain also hosted a private party at a Moscow restaurant and served Russian caviar out of the top of the trophy. (The caviar was placed in a separate, smaller bowl atop a layer of ice.)
BABIES
Last August, Penguins forward Josh Archibald and his wife, Bailey, baptized their three-week-old son in the Stanley Cup during a small ceremony in Minnesota. The Cup hasn’t been used for any baptisms this summer (that we know of ), but it has held a lot of babies.