Why is the NHL trophy called the Stanley Cup?

The oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, the Stanley Cup is the only trophy onto which the names of every member of the winning team is engraved. It is considered to be one of the most difficult trophies to obtain and has an almost mystical aura about it.

Sir Stanley and his NHL cup

Commissioned in 1892 by Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, who was at that time the Governor General of Canada, and an ardent hockey fan, the original cup (named the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup) was commissioned as a bowl measuring 8.5 centimetres (7.28 inches) high and 29 centimetres (11.42 inches) wide to be made of a silver and nickel alloy at a cost of ten guineas (around $1500 today).

Engraved around the rim of that original cup were the words “Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup” and “from Stanley of Preston”. Colloquially, the prize began to be referred to as Lord Stanley’s Cup, later shortened to the Stanley Cup.

Of course the cup that is hoisted today is much altered from that original trophy, with bands added as each team won the item and had their names engraved upon it. Over the years, the added bands gave the cup its long, conical shape, and as the names have piled up, so bands have had to be removed to make way for new names to be added.

The first team to engrave its roster was the 1906-07 Montreal Wanderers. At present, a total of 2,549 individuals are engraved on the cup - Henri Richard (Montreal Canadiens) is the player whose name appears the most - he appears 11 times, and Scotty Bowman (Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Montreal Canadiens), the coach with the most appearances - nine.

The current Stanley Cup design

Since 1963, the design has been standardized and a new cup made as a replica of the original, since it was felt that the original was simply too brittle to be presented to the winning team. Thirty years later, a replica trophy was cast.

Three Stanley Cups exist to this day - the original Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup bowl, the Presentation Cup, and the spelling-corrected replica Permanent Cup, which is on display along with the original trophy in Lord Stanley’s Vault within Esso Great Hall at the Hockey Hall of Fame at Brookfield Place in downtown Toronto. The Hockey Hall of Fame is open daily through Fall to Spring with opening hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The hall is closed on Induction Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

The Stanley Cup has toured the world, including exhibition stays in Russia, Japan, and Switzerland as well as atop mountain peaks through the Rockies and inside igloos in Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut.

The value of the cup may have been set at the cost of the materials and workmanship, but its value in the eyes of the legion of hockey fans around the world cannot be measured in dollars and cents. As the item of desire for every player and team, hockey’s Holy Grail, the pinnacle of achievement in the sport is beyond money, meaning so much more to so many people.

As a hockey fan, Lord Stanley would have wanted it that way.