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Faster than you can sing "O Canada," our search on "Stanley Cup" netted a Yahoo! category all about Frederick Arthur Stanley, aka Lord Stanley, the man behind the Cup. Lord Stanley was an Englishman appointed Governor General of Canada in 1888. He and his seven sons were avid sportsmen, and when they moved to Canada, they took up ice hockey. His
third son, Arthur, particularly enjoyed hockey, and in 1890, he gathered amateur players together to create the Ontario Hockey Association. The group played an annual hockey competition with other hockey associations. Arthur and his brother Algy persuaded their father to donate a trophy as "an outward and visible sign of the ice hockey championship." Lord Stanley agreed to have a small silver cup purchased for the occasion, and in 1892, the trophy was announced. The first Lord Stanley's Cup was awarded to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association for their 1893 season. Amateur teams continued to compete for the cup until 1910. Then the Stanley Cup became the prize for professional hockey players, starting with the predecessor to the National
Hockey League. The original silver bowl from Lord Stanley became increasingly fragile over the years and was retired in 1970. It's on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada. The Cup portion rests on a series of silver rings inscribed with the winning teams' names. Older rings are retired to the Hockey Hall of Fame when no new names can fit on them. Each player on the winning team is allowed to possess the Cup for one day. Over the years, this has resulted in some damage to the Cup. It's been used as everything from a urinal to a Jell-O mold, and it's traveled to Russia and the Czech Republic, among other places. Not a bad life for a little
bowl that originally cost about $50.
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