Stanley Cup

The Challenge Cup Era

During the period when it was a challenge cup, all of the leagues that played for the trophy had no annual formal playoff system to decide their own respective championships; whoever finished in first place after the regular season won the league title. But in 1894, four teams out of the five-team AHA tied for the championship with records of 5-3-0. This created problems for the AHA governors and the league trustees as to which team was champion, as there was no tiebreaking system in place. After long negotiation and the withdrawal of Quebec from the championship situation, it was decided that a three-team tournament would take place in Montreal, with the Ottawa team getting a bye to the finals (being the sole "road" team). On March 17, in the first Stanley Cup playoff game ever, the Montreal AAA defeated the Montreal Victorias, 3-2. Five days later, the AAA beat the Ottawa Generals, 3-1, in first Stanley Cup Final game.Podnieks, Lord Stanley's Cup, 20

The next year was the first official challenge for the Cup, by Queen's University. However, this did not come without controversy. The Montreal Victorias won the league title and thus the Stanley Cup, but the challenge match, which was scheduled earlier for the next day, was to be between the previous year's champion and the university squad. Thus, it was decided by the trustees that if the Montreal AAA won the challenge match, the Victorias would become the Stanley Cup champions. The AAA would eventually win the match 5-1 and their cross-town rivals were crowned the champions.

The first successful challenge to the Cup came the next year by the Winnipeg Victorias, the champions of the Manitoba Hockey League. On February 14 1896, the Winnipeg squad defeated the champions 2-0, and became the first team outside the AHA to win the Cup.

As the prestige of winning the Cup grew, so did the need to attract top players. After winning the Cup in March of 1906, the Montreal Wanderers went to the annual meeting of the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA) in November of that year and pushed through a resolution that would allow professional players to play alongside amateurs. Because the ECAHA was the top hockey league in Canada during that time, the Cup trustees went along and opened the challenges to preofessional teams.Diamond, The Ultimate Prize, 19 Meanwhile, the first professional players played for the Cup one month later during the Wanderers' two-game, total goals challenge series win over the New Glasgow Cubs, 17 goals to 5.Podnieks, Lord Stanley's Cup, 37

In 1908, the Allan Cup was introduced as the trophy for Canada's amateurs, and the Stanley Cup started to become a symbol of professional hockey supremacy. In that same year, the first all-professional team, the Toronto Trolley Leaguers from the newly created Ontario Professional Hockey League (OPHL), competed for the Cup.Diamond, The Official National Hockey League Stanley Cup Centennial Book, 38 One year later, the Montreal AAA and the Montreal Victorias, the two remaining amateur teams, left the ECAHA, and the ECAHA dropped "Amateur" from their name to become an all-pro league.. Then in 1910, the National Hockey Association (NHA) was formed. The new league soon proved to be unquestionably the top league in Canada as it kept the Cup for the next four consecutive years.Diamond, The Ultimate Prize, 24

Prior to 1912, challenges could take place at any time, given the appropriate rink conditions, and it was common for teams to defend the Cup numerous times in the year. In 1912, Cup trustees declared that the Cup was only to be defended at the end of the champion team's regular season.

The \"World Series\" Era

One year later, an agreement between the NHA and the PCHA would be reached in which their respective champions would face each other for the Cup, similar to baseball's World Series played between the American League and National League champions. Under the new proposal, the Stanley Cup Final series alternated between the east and the west each year, while the differing rules of the NHA and PCHA alternated each game.Diamond, The Ultimate Prize, 20 The Cup trustees were forced to accept the 1915 NHA-PCHA agreement because they had to depend on the top two professional leagues, since Canada's amateurs were now playing for the Allan Cup.Diamond, The Official National Hockey League Stanley Cup Centennial Book, 45 The PCHA's Vancouver Millionaires then won the first "formal" PCHA-NHA Cup Final, three games to zero in a best-of-five series.

After the Portland Rosebuds joined the PCHA in 1914, the trustees declared that the Cup was to be symbolic of world hockey supremacy. Two years later, the Rosebuds became the first American team to play in the Stanley Cup Final.Diamond, The Official National Hockey League Stanley Cup Centennial Book, 46. Then in 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans became the first American team to win the Cup. After the season, the NHA dissolved, and the National Hockey League (NHL) took its place.

The first year the Stanley Cup was not awarded was 1919. The Spanish influenza epidemic forced the cancellation of the series between the Montreal Canadiens and the Seattle Metropolitans.Podnieks, Lord Stanley's Cup, 51 After the series was tied at 2-2-1, the final game was never played because Montreal players Joe Hall, Manager George Kennedy, Billy Coutu, Jack McDonald and Edouard Lalonde were hospitalized with influenza. Joe Hall died four days after the cancelled game, and the series was abandoned.Diamond, The Official National Hockey League Stanley Cup Centennial Book, 51-52

The format for the Stanley Cup Finals changed in 1922, with the creation of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL). Now, three league competed for the Cup; two league champions faced each other for the right to challenge the third champion in the final series.Diamond, The Ultimate Prize, 20-21 This would only last three seasons as the PCHA and the WCHL would later merge to form the Western Hockey League (WHL) in 1924.Diamond, The Ultimate Prize, 21 Its champion after the 1924-25 season, the Victoria Cougars, eventually became the last team outside the NHL to win the Stanley Cup.

The NHL takes over

Then NHL President Clarence Campbell and the Cup in 1957.

The WHL folded in 1926, leaving the NHL as the only league left playing for the Cup. As a result, the Cup became the de facto championship trophy of the NHL. By 1947, the NHL reached an agreement whereby the trustees were only bound to award the Cup to the NHL champions (effectively automatically refusing challenges from other leagues that may have wished to play for the Cup).Diamond, The Ultimate Prize, 40

Since then, the Cup was awarded every year until 2005. A labour dispute between the NHL's owners and the NHL Players Association (the union that represents the players) led to the cancellation of the 2004-05 season. As a result, no Cup champion was crowned for the first time since the flu epidemic in 1919.

The lockout caused controversy among many fans, questioning whether the NHL has exclusive control over the Cup. A web site known as [Free Stanley] was launched, asking fans to write to the Cup trustees and urge them to return to the original Challenge Cup format. Adrienne Clarkson, the then-Governor General of Canada, alternatively proposed that the Cup be presented to the top women's hockey team in lieu of the NHL season. This idea was so unpopular that the Clarkson Cup was created instead.

Meanwhile, a group in Ontario filed an application with the Ontario Superior Court, claiming that the Cup trustees overstepped their bounds in signing the 1947 agreement with the NHL, and therefore must award the trophy regardless of the lockout. On February 7, 2006, a settlement was reached in which the trophy could be awarded to non-NHL teams should the league not operate for a particular season.

Engraving on the Cup

The engraved names of the 2000-01 Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche

A unique feature of the Stanley Cup is that, with few exceptions in the past, the Stanley Cup is currently the only trophy in professional sports that has the name of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff engraved upon it. This has not always been the case - one of Lord Stanley's original conditions said that each team could, at their own expense, add a ring on the Cup to commemorate their victory.

Initially, there was only one base ring, the one attached to the bottom of the original bowl by the first Cup champion Montreal AAA. Clubs engraved their team names, usually in the form [TEAM NAME] [YEAR WON], on that one ring until it was full in 1902. With no room to engrave their names (and unwilling to pay for a second band), teams left their mark on the bowl itself. The 1907 Montreal Wanderers became the first club to record their name on the bowl's interior surface, and the first champion to record the name of every member on their team.Podnieks, Lord Stanley's Cup, 12

In 1908, for reasons unknown, the Wanderers, despite having turned aside four challengers, did not record their names on the Cup. The next year, the Ottawa Senators added a second band onto the Cup. Despite the new room, the 1910 Wanderers and the 1911 Senators, for reasons unknown, did not put their names on the Cup. On the other hand, the 1915 Vancouver Millionaires became the second team to engrave players' names, this time inside the bowl along its sides.

The band added by the 1909 Senators would eventually be filled by the 1918 Millionaires. The 1915 Ottawa Senators, the 1916 Portland Rosebuds, and the 1918 Vancouver Millionaires all engraved their names on the trophy even though they did not officially win it under the new PHCA-NHA system. They had only won the title of the previous champion's league, and would have been crowned as Cup champions under the old challenge rules.Diamond, The Ultimate Prize, 8

No further engraving occurred until 1924, when the Canadiens added a new band on the Cup. However, since then, the engraving of the team and its players have been an annual tradition that has not been broken. Originally, a new band was added each year, causing the trophy to grow in size. Because the "Stovepipe Cup" (as it was later called due to its resemblance to the exhaust pipe of a stove) became impractical due to its ever increasing height, the Cup was then redesigned in 1948 as a two-piece cigar-shaped trophy with a removable bowl and collar. This Cup also properly honored those teams that did not engrave their names on the Cup themselves.Podnieks, Lord Stanley's Cup, 13

The modern one-piece Cup design was introduced in 1958 with the replacement of the old barrel with a five-band barrel (each of which could contain 13 winning teams).Podnieks, Lord Stanley's Cup, 9 Although the bands were originally designed to fill up during the Cup's centennial year, the names of the 1965 Montreal Canadiens were engraved over a larger area than allotted (and thus there are 12 teams on that band instead of 13).Podnieks, Lord Stanley's Cup, 14 The bands were finally all filled in 1991, and a decision was made to preserve the top band of the large barrel in the Hockey Hall of Fame and introduce a new blank band at the bottom so the size of the Stanley Cup would not grow further. In 2006, a second band replacement will be needed. It is also to be noted that since 1958, the Cup underwent several minor alterations, namely the retirement of the collar in 1963 and the bowl in 1969 in favor of duplicates because the originals were too brittle.

Currently, the Cup stands at 89.54 cm (35-1/4 inches) tall and weighs 15-1/2 kg (34-1/2 lbs).

The Stanley Cup today