In the princely realm of sporting awards, the Stanley Cup is the king of them all. It could stiff-arm college football's Heisman Trophy, drink the British Open's Claret Jug under the table, out-slug any prizefighter's World Championship Belt. It has been the hockey player's Holy Grail since 1892, when Frederick Arthur Lord Stanley of Preston, governor general of Canada, purchased a silver bowl for ten guineas ($48.67 at the time) to give to the best amateur hockey team in the land. The trophy passed into professional hands in 1910. Since then, it has moved from team to team with every National Hockey League championship. It is the oldest championship trophy in professional North American sports.

Today's version, three feet tall and weighing thirty-four pounds, is insured for more than $75,000 and is over four times its original size, thanks to the tradition of engraving its base with the name of every player on every championship team. Over the years this has meant more than a few uncorrectable misspellings, like the Bqstqn Bruins, the Maple Leaes, and the name of Montreal Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante, who won five NHL titles and saw his name spelled five different ways.

Despite its regal history and its imposing stature, however, the Stanley Cup remains a symbol of blue-collar effort, loyalty to roots, and the common touch--quite literally. That's because it's at the center of one of professional sports' most unlikely traditions. The Cup spends autumn resting in its shrine in the Hockey Hall of Fame. From January to May, it goes on a tour, winding its way through North America. But summer is when it lets loose, when each member of the title-winning team is allowed to take the Cup wherever he wants for twenty-four hours.

Over the years, the trophy has been drop-kicked into Ottawa's Rideau Canal, used to plant geraniums and feed dogs, paraded down Main Street in tiny Canadian towns, even lain forgotten on the side of a road for hours. It has found its way to Yankee Stadium, racetracks, golf courses, strip clubs, David Letterman's TV show, and Bob's Big Boy (for breakfast).

In 1992, after a limo carrying three Pittsburgh Penguins broke down, the trio began hitching rides with the Stanley Cup in tow. One stunned passerby offered to throw his girlfriend out of the car to make room. Indeed, the Cup may be viewed with awe-struck gazes one day and drunken grins the next. In 1998, three foreign members of the Detroit Red Wings carried the trophy to Russia for the first time, displaying it in Red Square. Later, other members of the team performed an experiment of sorts, discovering it takes seventeen cans of beer before the Cup runneth over.

In 1962, it was stolen from a glass case in Chicago Stadium by a distraught Canadiens fan. When a security guard asked where he was going with the Stanley Cup, the man told him, "I'm taking it back to Montreal, where it belongs." The NHL now provides a twenty-four-hour chaperone for the trophy's summer circuit, a so-called Keeper of the Cup who guards it, polishes it, and rides in the back of limousines with it. ("You always respect the cup," chaperone Walter Neubrand said during this summer's tour. "You don't disgrace it.") Still, hockey players will be hockey players, and the Cup has been along for the ride. In fact, after the Dallas Stars won the NHL championship last June, one team member wrapped a life jacket around the trophy and took it tubing in northern Minnesota. Another Dallas player is rumored to have tossed it off a balcony into a swimming pool, causing a three-inch dent in the silver prize. Clearly it's rather expected nowadays to bring Stanley to unexpected places.

On July 20, Joe Nieuwendyk '88 (the Dallas Stars' 6-foot-1 center and a four-time All-Star) got his twenty-four hours of trophy time. He'd earned it.

Playing on two reconstructed knees, Nieuwendyk scored twice against Edmonton in Game Four of the first playoff round, scored twice against St. Louis in Game Two of the second round, led his team with nine points against Colorado in the third round, and lifted Dallas to a six-game triumph over the Buffalo Sabres in the Stanley Cup Finals. After tying a league record with six game-winning goals in the playoffs, the former Rookie of the Year was named the playoffs' Most Valuable Player, joining a list that includes Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr--and a certain Ken Dryden '69.

So what did Nieuwendyk do with hockey's Holy Grail? He brought it to the Hill.

That's right, after a Tullyburger or two at the Glenwood Pines, Lord Stanley's Cup rode in Joe Nieuwendyk's sport-utility vehicle to the Moakley House at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course, where the former Big Red All-American had invited 300 guests--from head hockey coach and former teammate Mike Schafer '86 to twelve-year-old Ithacans in Number 25 jerseys--to pose with the Cup, touch the Cup, even hold the Cup over their heads. "A good part of my roots are right here in Ithaca," Nieuwendyk told the gathering. "Obviously, I'd like to share it with the whole town, but there's just not enough time."

-- Brad Herzog '90

Published in Cornell Alumni Magazine. Used by permission.