Stanley Cup Appears To Have Had A Rough Almost-24 Hours With Panthers
The Stanley Cup is no stranger to battle scars.
The Stanley Cup is spending another summer with the Florida Panthers, and already it has been off to an interesting start.
The Panthers clinched their second straight Cup win on Tuesday night in a lop-sided 5-1 Game 6 victory on home ice that included a massive, 4-goal performance from Florida forward Sam Reinhart.
After the game, Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov accepted the Stanley Cup from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, then handed it off to veteran defenseman Nate Schmidt. However, somewhere along the line, as the Panthers were taking turns skating the most famous trophy in sports, the iconic bowl took quite a beating.
Notice that this was before the Panthers had even left the ice, so I think legendary Keeper of the Cup Phil Pritchard probably knew at that moment that he was in for a long summer.
The next morning, the Panthers did the same thing they did the morning after winning the Cup last year and headed down to Fort Lauderdale hot spot Elbo Room, where players celebrated with fans from a second-story balcony.
However, it was then that you could see clear as day that the base of the Stanley Cup had a big dent in it.
This is far from the first time that some damage or misfortunate has befell the Stanley Cup during a team's celebration. It's been set on fire by the 1940 New York Rangers (who burned a mortgage in the bowl and cursed the team for the next 54 years) and the 1924 Montreal Canadiens left it on the side of the road after changing a flat tire.
Even last year, the Panthers got in a little trouble when Matthew Tkachuk took Cup to the beach (right across the street from Elbo Room if I'm not mistaken) and went for a dip with it in the Atlantic Ocean.
Of course, salt water doesn't exactly go well with a trophy made out of silver.