sstrang

"Go Flames Go!"

Okotoks, AB • Canada •

If I Had The Cup for a Day

When a team wins the Stanley Cup, each player and all the personnel for the team get to spend one day with the coveted cup. That's right, 24 hours. One of the keepers and caretakers of the Cup, Mike Bolt, says that each player has it "24 hours, and not one minute less". And why would you give it up before you had to? I mean, it's the freakin' Stanley Cup - the most coveted of all trophies in professional sports. Players and personnel have done all sorts of things with it. Guy Carbonneau let it fly from the balcony of the home of a drummer for the Dallas rock group Pantera the night after the Stars won it two years ago. Mario Lemieux had it in the bottom of his pool for crying out loud. It's been everywhere: Alaska, the bottom of the Rideau Canal, it's even been used for the christening of Sylvain Lefebvre's niece. So the question arises…what would I do with the Stanley Cup if I had it for a day?

The possibilities are endless. I mean, you could do anything with the Stanley Cup. Well - almost everything. A writer for ESPN wanted to eat Count Chocula out of it - they wouldn't let him. Which is understandable. The first thing I would do with it is bring it to my home town of Clarenville, Newfoundland, Canada. I'm pretty sure it's never been there before. But I wouldn't bring it to the mall, or to Town Hall. No, no, no. It belongs at the arena. And for the fun of it, my friends and I would have a little two-on-two hockey to see who would win the actual Stanley Cup.

Next, I would bring the Stanley Cup with me on a boat tour out to an iceberg. I would even be tempted to place the Stanley Cup on the iceberg, but fear of it slipping off the iceberg and into the icy Atlantic Ocean would kinda run up a huge bill from the NHL for losing the Stanley Cup. Plus, do you want to be known as the guy who lost the Stanley Cup in the Atlantic Ocean? I didn't think so.

After bringing it on a tour of Newfoundland, somewhere the Stanley Cup hardly ever visits, I would bring it to a few other places where the Stanley Cup hasn't been hoisted around lately. First stop? Toronto. They haven't won the Stanley Cup since the 1966-67 season. I'm sure they'd love to see it outside the Hall of Fame setting. Then we'd be off to Chicago. The Stanley Cup hasn't been hoisted there since 1961. We'd run over to Boston as well, aside from Ray Bourque hoisting it there the summer he won it as a member of the Colorado Avalanche, the Bruins haven't had one since 1972. The cup would also make visits to the great states of Ohio, Tennessee and Arizona. They haven't seen a Stanley Cup and I'm willing to bet they won't see it for a while.

With a long, strenuous trip with the Stanley Cup complete, I would return to Clarenville where my friends and I would round out my day with the Cup by tossing pennies in it and seeing who could get the most in Lord Stanley's mug. I know I've taken the Stanley Cup a lot of places in 24 hours and I know it's impossible to bring it to all these places in one day, but it's only a huge "IF". As if the NHL would ever give a guy like me the Stanley Cup. Besides, I plan on winning it myself in the future. No, not as a player, but as the guy who scrapes the gum off the dressing room floor. And if that guy doesn't get 24 hours with the Cup, then I don't think anyone deserves too.

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