Ah, the esteemed and venerated shaving mug.
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OTTAWA, 1903. A member of Ottawa's Silver Seven took the Cup home. The teammates found out, a scuffle ensued, and the Cup was tossed into a cemetery.
OTTAWA, 1905. After the Ottawa Silver Seven won the Stanley Cup, one celebrant boasted he could kick it across the frozen-at-the-time Rideau Canal (which links Ottawa on the Ottawa River with Kingston on Lake Ontario). In a day when the Cup was a football-sized bowl and when most hockey players also played rugby, he proceeded to drop kick it into the frozen canal. (Some sources list it as being submerged, however read on.) The partyers proceeded to party elsewhere, leaving the Cup behind. The next morning, the players realized that the Cup was still at the Canal, so they headed to recover the Cup and fortunately found it right where they left it On Colden Pond (or canal).
Abandonment came, abuse (or at least some really weird treatment) followed.
MONTREAL(?), 1906 or 1907. A Montreal club (possibly the Wanderers) wanted its picture taken with the Cup in the studio of photographer Jimmy Rice. After taking the photo, the team left, and the team left behind the Cup. It stayed in the studio for some months until Rice's mother (some sources say it was his wife or his housekeeper or his cleaning lady) used it as a vase, as it held red geraniums in the Studio window.
KENORA (?), ONTARIO, 1907. The Kenora Thistles were forbidden to use two players in the 1907 series. A team official took the Cup and said, "I'm going to throw it in Lake of the Woods." He didn't.
MONTREAL, CIRCA 1910. One of the then-champion Montreal Wanderers operated a St. Catherine Street Bowling Alley, where the Cup was "lodged in a showcase, heaped big with chewing gum to entice prospective buyers."
MONTREAL, 1924. The Montreal Canadiens went to Leo Dandurand's home for a champagne party. The car carrying the Cup had tire blow out, and the car's occupants put it on the side of the road while they stopped for repairs. After the repair, they drove off without the Cup. They realized this when only when they arrived at their destination, and they immediately left to retrace their route to try to find the Cup. They found it a mile and a half away from Dandurand's home--exactly where they left it.
OTTAWA, 1927. The Ottawa Senators won it, and it spent much of the year's summer in King Clancy's living room, where it served as a receptacle for everthing including letters, bills, chewing gum, and cigar butts.
NEW YORK CITY (?), 1940. After the New York Rangers won the cup, Hall of Famer Lynn Patrick and teammates celebrated by urinating in it.
MONTREAL, 1947. With Montreal trailing three games to two in the best-of-seven Cup final, Conn Smythe left the Cup in Montreal after the fifth game of the finals even though game six was slated for Toronto. This would make easier the celebration of a game seven win in Montreal. Problem is, Toronto won game six at Maple Leaf Gardens, thereby winning the Cup which was still in Montreal.
CHICAGO, 1962. When the Montreal Canadiens were losing in the playoff semifinals to the then-defending-Cup-champion Chicago Blackhawks, a Montreal fan went to the the Chicago-Stadium-lobby display case where the Cup was kept, took the Cup and headed for the door. The thief almost reached the street before being stopped by a stadium police officer Later, the fan said "I was taking the Cup back to Montreal, where it belongs."
TORONTO, LATE 1960s and 1970. The Cup was stolen twice from Hockey Hall of Fame in the late 1960s. (On December 5, 1970, Burglars stole the Cup along with the Conn Smythe trophy and the Bill Masterston Memorial Trophy.) Police would recover the trophies each time. One thief threatened to throw the Cup into Lake Ontario unless the charges were dropped.
NEW YORK CITY(?), 1980. 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."
MONTREAL(?), 1986. Chris Nilan of the champion Canadiens photographed the Cup in 1986 with his infant son in it. Nilan said, "His bottom fit right in."
EDMONTON, 1987. The night after the Edmonton Oilers won the Cup, one of them [likely Mark Messier] placed it on stage with an exotic dancer at the Forum Inn, an Edmonton strip joint just across the street from the Northlands Coliseum. Messier took the Cup to various night spots and let fans drink from it.
BOSTON, 1988. During the 1988 finals, two Harvard seniors served as security and guarded the Cup in Boston's Ritz-Carlton hotel.
NEW YORK CITY, 1994. New Yorkers savored the Cup when the Rangers won for the first time in 54 years. As Sports illustrated told it: "Like a loose puck it has been slapped from bar to nightclub to ballpark to ballroom to racetrack to squad car to firehouse to strip joint. Along the way it has been kissed, petted, hugged, massaged, fondled and shaken in exultation by thousands of fans. Many have taken sips from its ample bowl. 'God only knows whose lips have been on that thing,' says Bruce Lifrieri, the Rangers' massage therapist. " The litany of hijinks in New York alone deserves a webpage of its own:
* 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.)
* Messier took the Cup to Scores, an East Side strip joint. Scores spokesman Lonnie Hanover said, "It was the first time I'd seen our customers eager to touch something besides our dancers,"
* 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.)
The enthusiasm was so great that Stanley went in to a Montreal silversmith to repair its cracked bowl, loose base, and dented body. (It wasn't the first time--after a rough-and-tumble summer with the Oilers in 1988, the Cup went in to an auto body shop for reconstructive surgery. Messier really knows how to bang up a trophy.)
Indeed, in the words of Sport Illustrated's Franz Lidz, "Roughhousing is part of the trophy's tradition."
* The Cup was reputedly dismantled (by whom, when, where, how and for how long, I don't know--though it might have been done on numerous occasions).
* The Cup was reputedly used as a peanut dish (by whom, when and where, I don't know--though it might have been done on numerous occasions).
* 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.)
* It was reputedly dumped in a snowdrift (by whom, when and where, I don't know--though it might have been done on numerous occasions).
* The Cup has starred in its own beer commercial.
* The Cup also lay at the bottom of Patrick Roy's pool.
* Stefan Lefebrve had his son baptized in the Cup.
* During the two summers of 1997 and 1998 when the Red Wings won the cup, the Cup went golfing with Darren McCarty, to the shower with Steve Yzerman, bo[wl]ing with Martin Lapointe and visited Moscow with Slava Fetisov, Slava Kozlov, and Igor Larionov.
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