It's a sad day in our household, because the New Jersey Devils lost the Stanley Cup finals to the Los Angeles Kings. At least the Devils beat their hated rivals the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference Finals, and they lost to a truly worthy opponent who deserves its first ever NHL Championship.
There's really nothing like the Stanley Cup in other sports. Even though other sports are more popular in the U.S., the Stanley Cup is truly special. Hockey is the only sport where there's only one cup (well, technically two - the older, more delicate one sits in the Hockey Hall of Fame), instead of new, shiny replicas given out every year in other sports. Plus, the Stanley Cup just looks so beautiful in its gleaming silver.
Yahoo! has a great story on the Keepers of the Cup, Phil Pritchard and Craig Campbell, who have been handling the Cup together since 1998.
After winning the Stanley Cup, each team gets 100 days to spend with it. Usually each player gets 24 hours to spend with Cup, and players have used their allotted days differently, as this older article demonstrates. The Cup has had kids baptized in it, dogs and horses have drank from it, it has been thrown into swimming pools and the Hudson River (courtesy of the 1994 New York Rangers), it has gone to strip clubs and to sleep with several players, and many more mundane adventures such as parades, hometown visits, and drinking champagne from its bowl.
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