The Exhausting Stanley Cup

By Rochelle Bergman

It’s Stanley Cup time! Fans from all over are yelling louder for their teams. There is more spring to their steps and more team jersey wearing than any other time of the year! It’s loud, it’s fun and it’s finger-nail-biting, stress-ups-and-downs night!

This time of year also brings out the wackiness of the fans. In Montreal, Quebec in Canada there is a bar named “Bar Brutus.”  The importance of this bar which specializes in cocktails and other bar items is the fact that the bar’s niche is bacon. Twenty pounds of bacon was used to make a ‘Bacon Stanley Cup.’ Wow! Would you be able to eat bacon after that? I thought bacon smelling candles were odd enough, never mind the cup. I feel oily all over, don’t you right now?

I don’t know if you remember the contest of 2009? The contest ended by the public voting for the best fan made Stanley Cup. One of the choices was the Ham-ley Cup made by Anna Adler. Yes, it was shaped with ham and ate by a canine! It was a cup like no other. In this contest there were entries which included cups that were made from wood, cake, (yummy) pucks and skoal tins. Personally, I would have picked cake instead. I love my sugar way to much! Cake or ham? Which one would you have picked?

This is not the end of the adventures of the Cup. Not by a long shot. After the winning game, the winners use it as the champagne flute. It is passed by one and all. This trend started in 1896 by the Winnipeg Victorias. Tell me, how many germs is that? Then the fun and the travel starts for real! The players take this poor cup home for one day each. It gets into misadventures like being left on the side of the road. It has been urinated into. Pets have eaten from it as a dog bowl. Children have pictures taken in it. The cup has been used as a cooler for beer. Players have been known to sleep beside it for the night! I was surprised to hear that! It has been shipped for vets around the world to see. The adventures this cup has are amazing and more interesting than any Hollywood star! It has more stories to tell than most people I know.

The Stanley Cup is much more than a trophy. It brings countries together. It brings all kinds of folks who have nothing in common together like kin. The Cup brings out so many emotions like nothing else except religion and politics.

There is nothing else I know of like this game nor like the Stanley Cup! Enjoy the rest of the play-offs!