Lord Stanley’s Trophy Has Even Been in Manhattan Beach
Los Angeles, meet your newest resident.
It’s 35 inches high, weighs 35 pounds and shines like the biggest celebrities. It will look great with all this sunshine.
It’s Lord Stanley’s Cup – the Stanley Cup, for short – and it goes to the winner of the Stanley Cup Final, the National Hockey League’s champion.
Before the first of June, this would have been of little importance to Angelenos. But now, with the LA Kings ready to win it, well it’s time locals learned a little about it.
The coolest thing about the Stanley Cup is that it’s a hockey tradition that each player on the winning team gets to take it around for a day. He can take it anywhere he pleases. It’s been to bars and strip clubs.
It’s even been in Manhattan Beach. It was at Rock ‘n Fish some years ago. I’ve was there, saw it and even drank out of it. Not sure which hockey player had it, or what team he was with, but he was sharing sips with everyone.
With him, that Cup definitely did not runneth over, but it runneth dry.
And you can bet that will happen again in the South Bay. The Kings players use the North End in Hermosa Beach as their home bar, and at least one of them will take it in there for a celebration. And were it not for a crooked stick, it likely would have been at Harry O’s, the legendary Kings hangout of the early 90s, in Manhattan Beach.
It will probably also be on display at L.A. Live, most likely right after the Kings claim it. AEG, which owns the Staples Center, the Kings and also L.A. Live, won’t pass on that PR opportunity. The team gets to keep it for 100 days after the Final.
The Stanley Cup resides full-time in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto (that’s the only way Maple Leafs fans can see it, considering their team hasn’t won it since about the last time the Cubs won the World Series). That is where I was reunited with my drinking buddy a couple years ago when I was visiting one of my “favourite” party cities in North America.
So L.A., keep an eye out for your newest resident. If it’s only here for a few months.
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