You did WHAT with the Stanley Cup?

I am a die-hard hockey fan. For me there are only two parts to a year: hockey and waiting for hockey to start again. Those three months of waiting can be tortuous sometimes.

The crown jewel of the NHL is the Stanley Cup. It is awarded to the winner of the season.  Congratulations to the Los Angeles Kings who won the Cup this year!

One interesting fact about the Stanley Cup is that each of the players from the winning team gets to have the Cup for a day.  Do any other professional sports do this?

I am very excited about this because one of the players from the Los Angles Kings, Willie Mitchell, is from where I live!  The Stanley Cup is coming to Vancouver Island this summer.

Stories about the Stanley Cup

I love to hear the stories of what the players have done with the Cup. This story from TSN caught my attention a few years ago. It is about Tomas Holstrom (from the Detroit Red Wings who won the cup in 2008).

Here’s a snippet from the story:

ITEA, Sweden – Tomas Holmstrom had his day with the Stanley Cup on Friday, and he let his cousin use it as a baptismal font for a christening. Holmstrom suggested the idea to his cousin, Robert Sundstrom, who baptized his seven-week-old daughter Alva Felicia during a private ceremony outside Holmstrom‘s hometown of Pitea in northern Sweden. “Tomas came up with the idea when we were sitting in his summer cabin kitchen a week ago,” Sundstrom said. “Me and my wife thought it would be fun to christen our daughter in such a priceless object.” Rest of the story.

This is pretty tame in comparison to what teammate Kris Draper’s daughter did to or should I say “in” the Cup when he had it:

Remember this the next time you say you’d like to kiss the Stanley Cup.

Red Wings forward Kris Draper revealed during the weekend that his diaper less baby, Kamryn, did a number on the Cup. A number two, to be exact.

“A week after we won it, I had my newborn daughter in there, and she pooped in the Cup,” Draper said. “That was something. We had a pretty good laugh.

“I still drank out of it that night, so no worries.”

Here are a few more infamous things people have done with the Cup over the years:

• Mark Messier and Brian Leetch brought the Cup on The Late Show with David Letterman and did Stupid Cup Tricks.
  
• Ed Olczyk brought it to Belmont racetrack and let 1994-Kentucky Derby winner Go for Gin use it as a feed bag.
  
• Brian Noonan and Nick Kypreos brought the Cup on MTV Prime Time Beach House where it was stuffed with raw clams and oysters. (On the show, Noonan denied he had used the Cup as a rolling pin to make muffins. Kypreos denied playing kick the can with it.)
  
• The Cup went to a Ranger victory party at a Manhattan saloon called the Auction House, where it stopped traffic, started parades, and was drunk out of by everyone in sight until the bar was effectively down to backwash (but that probably wouldn’t have stopped them).
  
• After a ticker-tape parade up Broadway, and some time at McSorley’s bar, a cop named Jim Jones (different guy) strapped a seat belt around the Cup in his squad car and delivered it to another engagement.
  
• The Cup was taken to a Yankees game at Yankee Stadium, where it watched the game from George Steinbrenner’s luxury box. The Yankee fans at the game cheered “Let’s Go Rangers!” (That same day, the Cup visited Brian Bluver, a 13-year-old patient awaiting a heart transplant at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. According to his father, Brian “smiled for the first time in seven weeks”. A week and a half later Brian had 11th-hour heart surgery.)
• In 1991, The Cup was found at the bottom of Pittsburgh Penguin Mario Lemieux’s swimming pool. (Lemieux also once brought the Cup with him to bed.)
• The Cup also lay at the bottom of Patrick Roy’s pool.
• Clark Gillies of the 1980 New York Islanders allowed his dog to eat from it. Gillies said, “He’s a nice dog.” Islander Bryan Trottier took the Cup with him to bed. He said, “I wanted to wake up and find it right beside me. I didn’t want to think I’d just dreamed of this happening.”

Do you know of any other infamous things that have happened to the Stanley Cup (or any other professional sports trophies)?

A Few Related Posts You May Find Useful:

Louie Louie What Christians can learn from sports fans Oh ye of little faith . . . I’m embracing my limits The Grace of God: Review and Giveaway How forgiveness transcended tragedy An inspirational love story