Stanley Cup (NHL championship trophy)

The history of the Stanley Cup began in 1892 when FrederikStanley, Baron Stanley of Preston, who was serving as the sixth Governor General of Canada at the time, donated an 18.5 cm high and 29 cm wide silver cup, which was the first official Stanley Cup and was initially named the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, which Lord Stanley also had engraved on one side of the outer rim, while the other side read From Stanley of Preston.

Frederick Arthur Stanley paid ten guineas for the trophy, which is worth $75,000 today, which was about $50 and would be $1,186 today due to inflation. He first presented this to Lord Kilcoursie, a player for the Ottawa Rebels, who presented the trophy in trust during a banquet of the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Association to the distinguished citizens of Ottawa, Sheriff John Sweetland and Philip D. Ross with the following message from Lord Stanley:

Lord Stanley decreed the following rules for the annual competition:

The winner must return the trophy in perfect condition, if necessary via the trustees, so that it can be presented to the team that won it. He further decreed that the names of the franchise, the players and the year of victory of each winning team shall be engraved on a silver ring to be affixed to the trophy, and that the trophy shall be a challenge trophy which shall not belong to any team regardless of the number of victories, and that the trustees shall have full power of disposal over the trophy at all times.

The trustees also stipulated that the teams competing for the trophy must be senior teams, that the gate receipts would be shared equally between the two finalists, and that the finals would be played at the defending champions' stadium. In addition, only one participant from the same league was allowed to play for the trophy during a season.

The first Stanley Cup winner was the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association champion, the Montréal Amateur Athletic Association team, on March 17, 1893. However, there was no challenger for this title win. Frederik Arthur Stanley's term as Governor General of Canada ended on July 15, 1893, so by the time of the first real final for the Cup he sponsored, on March 22, 1894, he was already back in the United Kingdom. In the final, the Montréal Amateur Athletic Association defended the Stanley Cup with 1-0 victories over both the Montréal Victorias and Ottawa Capitals.

Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup Era (1893-1910)

At the beginning of the Challenge Cup era, the leagues competing for the trophy did not yet have a regulated play-off system to determine the respective champions. The winner was the team which had the first place after the regular season. In 1894, the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada found that four of the five participating teams were tied at the end of the season and thus no champion could be determined. After extensive negotiations, the league decided that a tournament of three teams, with the Québec Hockey Club declining to participate, would determine the champion. The tournament was held in Montréal and the Ottawa Hockey Club was the only away team automatically seeded for the final. Then, on March 17, 1894, the first play-off game for the Stanley Cup took place, which the Montreal Hockey Club won 3-2 against the Montreal Victorias. Five days later, the first final game for the Cup was played, in which the Montreal Hockey Club prevailed 3:1 against Ottawa.

The Cup was disputed in 1895, as Queen's University would have been the first official challenger for the trophy, but the Montreal Victorias would have won the championship and thus the Stanley Cup. However, according to Lord Stanley's stipulations, the challenger had to play the reigning Cup winner, i.e. the Montreal Hockey Club. The trustees now decided that if the Montreal Hockey Club won the game against the challenger university team, the Montreal Victorias would be awarded the trophy. The defending champions won the game 5-1 and thus their city rivals, the Victorias were awarded the Stanley Cup. The following year, the Winnipeg Victorias of the Manitoba Hockey League became the first team not affiliated with the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada to win the cup when they defeated the defending champions 2-0 on February 16, 1896.

As the prestige of winning the Challenge Cup grew, so did the need to professionalize the teams, and so in March 1906 at the annual general meeting of the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA), the Montreal Wanderers petitioned to open the league to professional players in addition to amateurs, which was allowed in consultation with the Cup Trustees.

The smallest town ever to be home to a Stanley Cup team is Kenora, Ontario. The community had about 4,000 residents at the time of the Kenora Thistles' Stanley Cup victory in 1907, when they defeated the Montreal Wanderers in two games with Art Ross and others. The Thistles were able to defend the trophy once before being defeated by the Wanderers in March 1907.

In 1908, Sir H. Montagu Allan established the Allan Cup, which replaced the Stanley Cup as the trophy for the best amateur hockey team in Canada. Since then, the Stanley Cup has been awarded to professional teams. The first fully professional team to win the Cup was the Toronto Trolley Leaguers from the Ontario Professional Hockey League in 1908. A year later, the Montreal Hockey Club and the Montreal Victorias were the last two amateur teams to leave the ECAHA, which was then transformed into a professional league.

Professional teams play for the Stanley Cup (1910-1927)

In 1910, the National Hockey Association (NHA) was formed and quickly became the best league in Canada, producing Cup winners in each of the next four years. Previously, it was possible for there to be challenges for the Stanley Cup several times a year, and thus several Cup winners during a year. This possibility was eliminated by the trustees in 1912, when they determined that the trophy would be played for exclusively following a regular season. In 1915, the professional leagues National Hockey Association (NHA) and Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) agreed that their respective champions would play each other in a final for the Stanley Cup, similar to the World Series in baseball. In 1915, the NHA and the PCHA agreed on a new play-off format where it was decided that there would be an annual rotation of the finals series. The finals were now played once in Eastern Canada (NHA) under NHA rules and the following year in the West (PCHA) under PCHA regulations. This was also done to reinforce the importance of the trophy by the top two professional leagues now that the Allan Cup was awarded to the amateur champion as the most important trophy. The Vancouver Millionaires (PCHL) won the first official matchup with the NHA in the best-of-five series with 3-0 victories over the Ottawa Senators. Back in 1914, the Portland Rosebuds (PCHA) became the first U.S. team to compete in the Stanley Cup finals. As a result, a statement was released by the trustees that henceforth the Stanley Cup award would no longer be limited exclusively to the best Canadian professional team. Three years later, the Seattle Metropolitans became the first U.S. team to win the Stanley Cup with 3-1 victories over the Montréal Canadiens. Two years later, the team again faced the Canadiens in the finals, but the series was halted at a score of 2-2 because several players on the Canadian team came down with Spanish flu, as a result of which Joe Hall died on April 5. The Stanley Cup was not awarded this year for the first time. The play-off format was changed in 1922 after the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) became another professional league to play for the Stanley Cup. After just three seasons, however, the WCHL merged with the PCHA. After a series of further league mergers and renamings, the PCHA was dissolved after the 1925/26 season and the NHA, which has been called the National Hockey League since 1917, has played out the Cup winner among its teams ever since. The Victoria Cougars were the last team outside the NHL to win the Stanley Cup in the 1924/25 season. At the same time, they were the only non-NHL Stanley Cup winning team since the NHL was founded in 1917.

Teams of the National Hockey League play for the Stanley Cup (since 1927)

The Montréal Canadiens are the most successful team with 24 Stanley Cup victories to date - 23 of them since joining the NHL. They have also been to the Stanley Cup final nine other times, in which they were the losers. Henri Richard won the most field player titles with eleven, all with Montréal. Ken Dryden and Jacques Plante are the most successful goalies with six trophies; they also won the championships all with the Canadiens. Scotty Bowman won nine trophies as a coach, more than anyone else. Jean Béliveau's name is immortalized most often on the Cup. He won the trophy ten times as a player and seven times as a manager.

Since the 1914/15 season, the trophy has been won 96 times by 18 different active and five inactive National Hockey League franchises. Prior to that, nine different teams won the trophy under the former name Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup. Since de facto NHL-only teams have competed for the Stanley Cup since 1927, Canadian and U.S. franchises each won it 42 times through 2012. Of the current NHL teams, Columbus, Minnesota, Phoenix and Winnipeg have never been to the Cup final. Six others-Buffalo, Florida, Ottawa, Vancouver, Nashville, and Las Vegas-have been to the Stanley Cup Final at least once, but came out losers. The Pittsburgh Penguins (2009), Chicago Blackhawks (2010), Boston Bruins (2011) and Los Angeles Kings (2012) each won the trophy after participating in their championship season in the NHL season opener in Europe, which took place between 2007 and 2011.

The Supreme Court in Ottawa ruled in 2006 that the de facto exclusive rights to the Stanley Cup granted to the NHL since 1947 by trustees P. D. Ross and Cooper Smeaton violated the regulations established by Frederick Arthur Stanley. As a result, the NHL decided that teams from other hockey leagues would also be allowed to play for the trophy in the event of future NHL play not taking place as in the case of the lockout in the 2004-05 season. In 2006 year there was already a petition from hockey fans to the trustees, with the wish to return to the original "Challenge Cup format". Rejected, however, was a proposal by Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson to award the Cup to the best women's team during the lockout season as they contested their season. Since this idea was not realized, she donated the Clarkson Cup as a counterpart to the Stanley Cup as championship trophy of the Canadian Women's Hockey League.