Stanley Cup

Stanley Cup

The Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League playoff winner. The trophy was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada. The first Cup was awarded in 1893 to Montreal Hockey Club, and winners from 1893 to 1914 were determined by challenge games and league play. It was established as the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 and then the de jure NHL championship prize in 1947. Since the 1914–15 season, the Cup has been won a combined 103 times by 20 current NHL teams and 5 defunct teams.

About Stanley Cup in brief

Summary Stanley CupThe Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League playoff winner. The trophy was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada. The first Cup was awarded in 1893 to Montreal Hockey Club, and winners from 1893 to 1914 were determined by challenge games and league play. Professional teams first became eligible to challenge for the Stanley Cup in 1906. It was established as the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 and then the de jure NHL championship prize in 1947. Since the 1914–15 season, the Cup has been won a combined 103 times by 20 current NHL teams and 5 defunct teams. The Montreal Canadiens have won it a record 24 times and are the most recent Canadian-based team to win it, doing so in 1993. The Detroit Red Wings have won the Cup 11 times, the most of any United States-based NHL team, most recently in 2017. More than three thousand different names, including 13 of the 13 players on the current team, have been engraved on the Cup’s bands. The Cup is topped with a copy of the original bowl, made of a silver and nickel alloy. It has a height of 89. 54 centimetres and weighs 15. 5 kilograms. A new Stanley Cup was not made each year, unlike the trophies awarded by the other major professional sports leagues of North America. The winners originally kept it until a new champion was crowned, but winning teams currently get the Cup during the summer and a limited number of days during the season.

Between 1924 and 1940, a new band was added almost every year that the trophy was awarded, earning the nickname ‘Stovepipe Cup’ due to the unnatural height of all the bands. In 1947, the cup size was reduced, but not all the large rings were the same size. In 1958, the modern one-piece Cup was designed with a five-band barrel which could contain 13 winning teams per band. The oldest band is removed when the bottom band is full and preserved in the Hockey Hall of Fame in order to prevent it from growing, and a new blank band added to the bottom. The NHL has registered trademarks associated with the name and likeness of the Stanley cup, although there has been dispute as to whether the league has the right to own trademarks associatedwith a trophy that it does not own. The original bowl was made of silver and is 18. 5 centimetres high and 29 centimetre wide, and is now on display at the HockeyHall of Fame. The Stanley Cup has also been referred to as The Cup, Lord Stanley’s Cup, The Holy Grail, or facetiously as Lord Stanley’s Mug. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, and the International Ice Hockey Federation considers it to be one of the ‘most important championships available to the sport’ The Cup was first awarded to Montreal hockey club in 1893.