What Sets Stanley Apart?

True hockey fans will be the first to say that their sport has the best trophy. The truth is, we do. For one thing, the Stanley Cup goes to the players first, instead of the owners. You may even notice some coaches step back and let their players raise it first. Coming in at 34.5 pounds and standing at 35.25 inches it is truly something that you have to lift above your head.

The Stanley Cup you see is the same Stanley that Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux have lifted above their heads. Unlike other teams, a new trophy is not made every year. Instead, players get to raise the exact Cup they dreamt of raising as children. The Cup also gets the names of players, coaches, management and staff of the winning team permanently engraved on them. If you win the Cup, your name will go down in hockey history.

The players actually get the Cup for a day. Unlike other sports, the players themselves get to take the Cup to their hometown and enjoy a day with it. The NHL allows the winning team to spend 100 off-season days with the Cup, but who was the first to give each player a day with it?

That was the 1994-95 New Jersey Devils who made the tradition what we know today. They started giving it to each player and front office member for a day. Since the Devils won the Cup again in 2003, the Hall of Fame has been keeping a journal of Stanley’s travels.

Where’s Stanley?

Stanley has been all over the world — even to Afghanistan — all accompanied by its keeper, of course. Phil Pritchard has been the keeper of the Cup since 1991 and travels everywhere the Cup goes. His journeys with the Cup can be found on his Twitter. When Lord Stanley donated the Cup he made sure to mandate that two trustees would always ensure that the Cup remained safe. Currently, Brian O’Neill and Ian Morrison are those two trustees and have absolute power over all matters regarding the Stanley Cup. When handling the Cup, these men always wear white gloves.

Stanley Records

The youngest player to ever win the Cup was Larry Hillman. He was just 18 years, 2 months, and 9 days old when the Detroit Red Wings won the Cup in 1955.

Chris Chelios was the oldest player to win the Cup. He was 46 years, 6 months when he won the Cup with Detroit in 2008.

Henri Richard, brother of Maurice Richard, has his name on the Cup 11 times as a player.

Scotty Bowman has his name on the Cup nine times as a coach, split between the Penguins, Red Wings and Canadiens.

The Montreal Canadiens are the winningest team in Cup history with 24 Stanley Cup victories to their name. They won it five years in a row between 1956 and 1960. Only the 1976 to 1979 Canadiens and 1980 to 1984 New York Islanders have four consecutive wins.

The only eighth-seed team to ever win the Stanley Cup were the 2012 Los Angeles Kings.

Two babies have been baptized in the Cup. The first was Sylvain Lefebvre’s daughter, who was baptised after the Colorado Avalanche won in 1996. The second was Tomas Holmström’s niece. The Detroit forward allowed his cousin to baptize his seven-week-old daughter in the bowl when the Red Wings won in 2008.

The costliest celebration was the 2011 Bruins celebration at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods. They managed to rack up a $156,679.74 tab at the bar that was partially helped by a $100,000 bottle of champagne.

As of 2024, the most valuable NHL team is the Toronto Maple Leafs, with an estimated value of $2.8 billion. This valuation has pushed the Maple Leafs back to the top spot for the first time since 2014, surpassing the New York Rangers, who are now valued at $2.65 billion??.

The top five most valuable NHL teams in 2024 are:

1. Toronto Maple Leafs – $2.8 billion
2. New York Rangers – $2.65 billion
3. Montreal Canadiens – $2.3 billion
4. Los Angeles Kings – $2 billion
5. Boston Bruins – $1.9 billion?
6. Chicago Blackhawks – $1.875 billion
7. Edmonton Oilers – $1.850 billion
8. Philadelphia Flyers – $1.650 billion
9. Washington Capital – $1.600 billion
10. New York Islanders  $1.550 billion

These teams’ values are influenced by factors such as market size, team performance, revenue from ticket sales and merchandise, and lucrative sponsorship deals. The Maple Leafs’ value, for instance, is bolstered by their ownership of the Scotiabank Arena and the broader portfolio of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which also includes the Toronto Raptors (NBA) and Toronto FC (MLS)?.

As the NHL’s most financial struggling team the Arizona Coyotes moves to Salt Lake City Utah and become a new name and new team after the NHL Board of Governors voted unanimously Thursday to approve a $1.2 billion sale from Alex Meruelo to Utah Jazz owners Ryan and Ashley Smith, the city & fan base that is most deserving of a franchise is still waiting in Quebec City. We have seen cities like Las Vegas & Seattle get an expansion team in the NHL in recent years before Quebec. We have seen the Atlanta Thrashers be sold and moved to Winnipeg Jets where they are thriving.

Formed in 1972 as part of the now-defunct World Hockey Association, the Quebec Nordiques had been losing money for years. It had been originally owned by a San Francisco group as the San Francisco Sharks but when the investors failed to come up with the necessary financing it had been hastily sold to a group of Quebec City investors. After the WHA collapsed the team moved over to the NHL in 1979. What the Nordiques lacked was a fan-base. Quebec City was the smallest market in the NHL and the second-smallest major-league city in North America. Only Green Bay, Wisconsin; home to the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, was smaller. Though the Nordiques had the loyalty of local hockey fans, they weren’t enough to keep the team viable in a rapidly changing hockey environment.

The Nordiques inability to expand their following was largely the result of Quebec City’s status as a monolingual francophone city. With no privately-owned English-language radio stations and only one privately-owned English-language television station, there was little opportunity for the team to broaden its reach. he near-total lack of English-language media limited the Nordiques’ appeal to the rest of the continent and made Anglophone players wary of playing for them. As the team continued to lose money, its owners begged for a bailout from Quebec’s provincial government. Premier Jacques Parizeau turned the request down flat. No politician was prepared to risk subsidizing a sports organization that paid its players multimillion-dollar salaries.

Finally in May 1995, right after the Nordiques were eliminated from post-season play, Nordiques CEO Marcel Aubut announced that he had no other choice but to accept an offer from COMSAT Entertainment Group, owner of the NBA’s Denver Nuggets. COMSAT moved the team to Denver where it was renamed the Colorado Avalanche. Though the Nordiques franchise and Aubut himself never lost money on the team, Aubut feared losing money and sold the team before the possibility became a reality. The sale price was enough to put a $15 million payout in Aubut’s pocket. Things are different now and Quebecor, a large Canadian diversified media and telecommunications company serving Québec based in Montreal, are looking to bring a team back to Quebec City

Quebec City also has a modern arena that needs a team to fill its seats, and we know full well that there’s a deeply-ingrained hockey culture there that would rush to support an NHL team. We also know that there’s an uphill climb for Quebec City when you strictly look at its population,  Quebec City’s city population of approximately 550,000 would be the smallest of any NHL market, while the metropolitan population of more than 800,000 would be the second smallest. Quebec is a smaller locale, but, like the Winnipeg Jets, they have a built-in, ready-to-go fan base that undoubtedly would have better attendance than many current NHL markets.

And yet Salt Lake City got a franchise!