Stanley Cup

I

Introduction

Stanley Cup, team trophy for professional ice hockey, awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. The Stanley Cup is one of the most popular sporting events of the year in Canada, which is home to six NHL franchises and a majority of the NHL’s players.

The Stanley Cup is the oldest championship team trophy in North America. It is named for Lord Stanley of Preston, who represented the British monarch as governor-general in Canada from 1888 to 1893. Lord Stanley purchased the trophy in 1892 for an amateur ice hockey competition. From 1910 to 1926 teams from several Canadian professional leagues and associations, including the NHL, vied for the cup.

In 1927 the trophy became the annual award for NHL champions only. The winning club gains possession of the cup for one year, until the next champion is crowned.

II

Trophy Details

The original Stanley Cup was 19 cm (7.5 in) high and 29 cm (11.5 in) wide and was made by a London-based silversmith in 1892. Lord Stanley purchased the cup for about $50 as an award for the amateur ice hockey champions of Canada. Lord Stanley returned home to England in 1893, never having seen a Stanley Cup game and before his trophy was presented to a championship team.

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Over the years, as each Stanley Cup champion was crowned, the names of that team's players, coaches, managers, and owners were inscribed on the trophy. To make room for all the names, silver bands were added. Today, the barrel-shaped trophy is more than 89 cm (35 in) tall and has three distinct parts: five large bands on the bottom that make up the trophy’s base, three smaller bands in the middle that bear the names of the champions from 1893 through 1927, and a copy of Lord Stanley’s original cup, which tops the award. (The original cup is fragile and resides at the Hockey Hall of Fame.) About 12 or 13 teams can fit on each of the large bands. When the bottom band is filled, the oldest of the five large bands is removed from the trophy and stored at the Hockey Hall of Fame. The remaining four bands are reattached, and a blank band is added to the base for future champions.

III

Winning the Cup

The Stanley Cup championship is held each spring after the NHL’s 82-game regular season and several rounds of playoffs. It pits the Eastern Conference champion against the Western Conference champion. To claim the cup, a team must triumph in four playoff rounds—a grueling process that can last nearly two months.

A total of 16 teams participate in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Eight teams from each conference qualify and are seeded number 1 through number 8 based on their regular-season win-loss record, with the number 1 seed going to the team with the best record. In each conference, the higher-ranked teams play the lower-ranked teams in a best-of-seven series: The 1 seed plays the 8 seed, the 2 seed plays the 7 seed, and so on. Winning teams advance to the next round of playoffs. After a third round, only one team remains in each conference. These Eastern and Western conference champions then meet in the Stanley Cup Finals in a best-of-seven series. The team that wins is crowned the Stanley Cup champion.

IV

History

The Montréal Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) team, champion of the Amateur Hockey Association in 1893, was awarded the first Stanley Cup title. Under the competition’s rules at the time, the trophy’s trustees arranged periodic title matches between the champion and challenging teams. Montréal AAA was successful in a series against the Montréal Victorias in 1894, but the Victorias succeeded in capturing the trophy a year later. The Stanley Cup championship remained a largely amateur event through the turn of the 20th century.

The growth of professional hockey turned the Stanley Cup championship into a professional event by 1910, when the National Hockey Association (NHA), based in eastern Canada, had become the dominant league in the country. In 1914 the NHA agreed to an east-versus-west Stanley Cup championship between the NHA champions and the first-place team from the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). The NHA disbanded in 1917 and was re-formed as the NHL. For the next decade the format of the Stanley Cup championship varied, but it always included the NHL champion playing against the champion of one or more other leagues—the PCHA, the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL), and the Western Hockey League (WHL)—sometimes in a three-way challenge. The competition became a NHL-only championship in 1927.

Several NHL franchises have illustrious Stanley Cup histories. The Montréal Canadiens have won the cup a record 24 times, including one victory during their time as an NHA team. They are followed by the Toronto Maple Leafs with 13 titles and the Detroit Red Wings with 10 titles. All three clubs had notable dynasties that contributed to each franchise’s overall total. Montréal won five straight Stanley Cups from 1956 through 1960, six more titles in the nine seasons between 1965 and 1973, and four additional championships from 1976 to 1979. Toronto won the cup three straight seasons from 1962 to 1964, while Detroit's best streak was four cups in six seasons from 1950 to 1955.

In 1967 the NHL began to add new teams periodically, and since then a few teams have had sustained success in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Montréal Canadiens squads that won four championships in the late 1970s were succeeded by New York Islanders teams that claimed four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980 through 1983. The Edmonton Oilers captured the championship five times in the seven seasons from 1984 to 1990. In the 1990s only two franchises won the cup more than once, the Pittsburgh Penguins (1991, 1992) and the Red Wings (1997, 1998). The New Jersey Devils won titles in 2000 and 2003, and lost in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2001.

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