SID calendar sheet on March 18: Stanley Cup is donated

The British Governor General of Canada is appointed by the Earl of Derby, Queen Victoria. Lord Stanley of Preston quickly learns to appreciate the country, enjoys fishing and enjoys ice hockey. So it happened that on 18 March 1892, he donated a trophy made in Sheffield, which he received from Silversmith GR Collis & Co, London.

The “Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup” is engraved on it, but the Silver Bowl was quickly renamed the Stanley Cup after the donor. It was first awarded to the Canadian amateur champion in 1894, but by then, Swamy had already returned to England, the son of three-time British Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley.

The original trophy, for which only the professional has been playing since 1910 and which the NHL champion has picked up to date, is 18.5 centimeters tall. But the valuable piece has changed a lot over the years.

The Stanley Cup now measures about 90 centimeters and weighs 16 kilograms. It is huge, 2394 names of title winners are currently engraved (Montreal Wanderers were the first team to be immortalized in the Cup in 1907). And it messed up a lot. Includes alphabets, spelling mistakes, everything. Jacques Plante’s name was scratched five times, each time differently.

Unlike other trophies, the Stanley Cup is a real challenge cup, it is passed from champion to champion year after year. The winners have to spend some time with them, including Dennis Seidenberg. The defender baptized two of his daughters in 2011 with the Boston Bruins NHL champions.