Stanley Cup has long globetrotting history
While it seemed as if Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin was establishing a new standard for partying with the Stanley Cup, he was merely preserving a long tradition of players taking the famous trophy anywhere and everywhere.
“Pavel Datsyuk took the Cup to Siberia “he was on the Europe-Asia border, in the Ural Mountains,” said Hockey Hall of Fame vice president Phil Pritchard, often seen on television as the man with the white gloves bringing the Cup onto the ice.
Ovechkin will get his chance to take the 126-year-old Cup to Russia because every member of the Capitals will have a day with the Cup this summer as part of the NHL’s agreement with the Hockey Hall of Fame.
The Cup has visited 25 countries, but that doesn’t begin to tell the story of its travels.
“We have been mountain climbing in Colorado, and (Scott) Niedermayer took it to the top of the Rocky Mountains,” Pritchard said. “(Teemu) Selanne took it to a sauna party. We tried to take it waterskiing with Mike Babcock, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. I’m glad of that. We’ve been water tubing. We’ve had a christening in it. Players try to be creative.”
Former NHL player Blake Sloan, a member of the 1999 Dallas Stars championship team, once asked Pritchard if he could take the Stanley Cup skydiving.
“I guess the rest of the guys told him to go ask me,” Pritchard said. “But he couldn’t keep a straight face after a while, and finally he said, ‘I don’t want to go skydiving with it. I want to play road hockey with it. But I just wanted to know if you could go skydiving with it.”’
Skydiving would not be allowed, although there is nothing etched in stone, or on the Cup, about where it can or can’t go.
“But we aren’t going skydiving and we aren’t going scuba diving, and we are always going to be respectful to the player, the community, the team and history of the game,” Pritchard said.
The Cup’s history reads like a pageturner. The Montreal Wanderers accidentally left the Cup at the home of a photographer in 1907 and his wife turned it into a flower pot before the team reclaimed it. The 1924 Montreal Canadiens left the Stanley Cup on the side of the road after changing a tire on an automobile.
Pritchard recalls that Tomas Kopecky took the Cup to Slovakia and he served a traditional soup in the Cup. It was made by his mother and the name of the soup, according to Pritchard, translates into “inside of a stomach of a cow soup.”
“I didn’t eat any out of the Cup, but I did try some out of a bowl, and it was great,” Pritchard said.
He pauses, and laughs hard: “I don’t eat anything out of the Cup because I want to win it first. Then I will.”
Twice, scofflaws tried unsuccessfully to steal the Stanley Cup. Guy Lafleur once took the Stanley Cup home to show friends and family and didn’t realize that the Hall of Fame was looking frantically for it.
Celebrations have become more public through the years. Now, because of social media, people know exactly where the Cup is located.