The Stanley Cup headed out on Sunday to begin its summer vacation with the players and staff of the 2024–25 champion Florida Panthers. The idea of giving everyone from the winning team their own day with the trophy began in 1993. To celebrate the Stanley Cup’s centennial that year, every member of the Montreal Canadiens was given his own day to spend with the trophy during the summer.

After the Stanley Cup got a rough ride with the New York Rangers in 1994 — it’s never truly been clear whether Ed Olczyk really fed the Kentucky Derby–winning racehorse Go for Gin from the Stanley Cup at Belmont Park —this popular practice was formalized in 1995. Since then, the Hockey Hall of Fame has provided the Cup with its own “keeper” to ensure things stay on schedule (the Cup travels nearly every day over the summer, and often goes overseas these days) and that things don’t get out of hand.

Ottawa won it in 1909, but a new Stanley Cup tradition would have to wait.

Back in the old days — from the 1890s through the 1980s — the Stanley Cup champions were usually presented with the trophy shorty after winning it, either on the ice, in the dressing room afterwards, or at a banquet in a hotel or another civic location over the next week or two. In the early years, the Cup would often reside in the championship city for a while and go on display in some prominent public space. (My friend Stephen Smith wrote about this recently on his wonderful Puckstruck web site.) In more recent years, the players might get a few days to spend with the Cup, but then they weren’t likely to see it again until their team’s home opener at the start of the next season.

Before 1993, the Stanley Cup did occasionally make special appearances for personal reasons. I was recently reminded in a story from ESPN that in 1989, Phil Pritchard, the Cup’s most famous keeper (and, really, the only one back then), was persuaded by Colin Patterson of the Calgary Flames to bring the trophy to his home in the Toronto suburb of Rexdale. And in 1992, the Stanley Cup spent some time in the backyard of my longtime boss Dan Diamond of NHL Publishing.

Dan Diamond’s Stanley Cup commemorative book and his dog, Louis.

Dan’s day with the Stanley Cup came on July 5, 1992. (This was before my time with Dan Diamond & Associates.) The trophy had spent the previous day celebrating the 4th of July in Pittsburgh with Penguins captain Mario Lemieux and his teammates. (It may or may not have ended up in Mario’s swimming pool that time, as it when Pittsburgh first won it in 1991 and would again in 2009.) Dan picked up the Cup at Pearson Airport in Toronto in the morning and brought it to the McClelland & Stewart booth at the Canadian Booksellers Association Expo. M&S was getting in some early promotion for The Official National Hockey League Stanley Cup Centennial Book, which Dan was edited and they would publish the following summer. Guests at the booth could get their picture taken with the trophy that day.

Things being simpler then, Dan was told they didn’t need the Stanley Cup returned to the Hockey Hall of Fame until the next morning. So he brought it home for a backyard barbecue. There were about 35 friends on hand who were pretty excited to see it … although Dan’s collie, Louis (pronounced Louie), reclining with the Cup on the table behind him in the photograph above, seems a little more chill.

But is it possible that special days with the Stanley Cup began all the way back in 1909 with hockey legend Cyclone Taylor?

From Stanley Cup: 120 Years of Hockey Supremacy and
from Star Power: The Legend and Lore of Cyclone Taylor.

After the Ottawa Senators clinched the Stanley Cup with an 8–3 win over the Montreal Wanderers on March 4, 1909, the team was rewarded with a banquet at the new Russell House hotel in the Canadian Capital on March 16. Reporting on the evening the next day, The Ottawa Citizen noted: “Fred Taylor made the unusual request that he be allowed to take the Stanley Cup home to Listowel with him at Easter time. He said it had always been his highest ambition to figure on a Stanley Cup team and now that he had assisted in winning it he wanted to take the celebrated trophy home to his native town to let the Listowel people get a look at it. Taylor guaranteed to return the Cup in perfect order and his wish may be granted, providing the trustees don’t object.”

The Citizen never followed up on the story. Nor did The Ottawa Journal. (Two newspapers that are now easily searchable online.) But at some point, I came across a story somewhere that said Cyclone Taylor wasn’t allowed to bring the Stanley Cup home to Listowel. I wrote as much in a children’s biography of Taylor in 2007 and in a book about the Stanley Cup in 2012. But, in 2021, when Stephen Smith asked me about the Taylor incident for a story he was writing for his web site, I could NOT come across what I’d found. I can no longer remember if it was in a newspaper or a book (there’s nothing in Eric Whitehead’s biography of Taylor), but I was stunned when I couldn’t find anything in my notes.

I’m still positive I’d found something … but it bothered me that I didn’t have proof.

Until a few days ago!

Another colleague, Greg Nesteroff (a British Columbia writer and historian who maintains a fascinating website about Frank and Lester Patrick), told me The Ottawa Free Press had been digitized by a British newspaper web site. I knew I hadn’t found my Cyclone story there originally, but I still felt certain The Free Press would have something about it. And with Greg’s help, I found what I was looking for!

There were actually two stories. The one shown above is from April 10, 1909, and it more or less says the trustees hadn’t allowed Taylor to bring the trophy home. The second story, from April 27, offers as the excuse that the Stanley Cup was too big to travel and that the freight charges “would be considerable.”

As noted in the book excerpts above, Fred W. (Cyclone) Taylor
engaged in a little freelance engraving back in 1909.

The way the second story is written, the exaggerated size of the Stanley Cup at that time is either meant as a joke … or it’s a big city Ottawa reporter mocking the citizens of small town Listowel.

There’s no way to know for sure, but I’m glad to have proof again that I was right!

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Sad news yesterday for Blue Jays fans old enough to remember Jim Clancy, who passed away at the age of 69. Clancy was a workhorse pitcher back in the days when that meant something. Only one other pitcher since then (Charlie Hough in 1987) has matched the 40 games Clancy started for Toronto in 1982. He was a Blue Jay from 1977 to 1988, so covering all five years of my time with the ground crew from 1981 to 1985. My favorite Clancy memory is from his 40th and final start in 1982.

The Jays finished that season strong, and on October 3, 1982, Jim Clancy capped the year with a complete game five-hitter in a 5-2 win over Seattle. With that, the Jays finished the season with a record of 78-84. Not very impressive, you might think, but for the first time ever Toronto wasn’t buried in last place. True enough, they were tied with Cleveland for sixth instead of alone in seventh, but the 19,064 on hand roared their approval as Clancy came off the mound and fired his cap and glove into the stands. “We’re Number 6!” some people shouted, and “Bring on the Indians!” You just knew better things were ahead! And indeed the next 10 years would culminate in back-to-back World Series championships.

Those were the Jays!