Lord Stanley's Cup

Hockey, or what foreigners call "Ice Hockey", is to Canada what baseball is to America, and cricket is to England. Though other nations play it, and play it well, it is our game. We understand it better than anyone else because we invented it, we mastered it, we raised it to a national art form. We unite over it. The sport has an almost religious significance to Canadians.

Emblematic of this religion is the glorious – nay – the mystical Stanley Cup, commonly referred to as simply "The Cup", "The Holy Grail", or "Lord Stanley’s Mug." In 1892 Governor General Lord Stanley of Preston, a hockey fan, donated this cup (see below), named in his honour, to be awarded to the "champion hockey team in the Dominion of Canada".

Today, the Stanley Cup is the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, and is awarded each year to the top hockey franchise in the National Hockey League (Only six of the thirty NHL franchises are based in Canada, but Canadian players outnumber Americans in the league by a ratio of almost four to one). There is only one official Stanley Cup; it is the only trophy in professional sports that has the names of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff - now an unbroken annual tradition - engraved upon its chalice as well as its rings and base. Thus its ever growing size and stature, slowly manifesting itself into the statuesque magnificence it represents today.

I will have more on my Crown and Hockey series in the posts to come.