Stanley Cup keg stands may have begun and ended with the Washington Capitals
The Washington Capitals invented the Cup stand, which is a keg stand out of the Stanley Cup and also awesome, but the 126-year-old trophy’s keepers might retire the practice before it becomes tradition.
Teammates held Capitals star Alexander Ovechkin upside down over the Cup as he drank beer from it during a celebration at D.C.’s Georgetown Waterfront in June, launching a fad that players have shared across the world with family and friends as they each spend a day with the coolest trophy in sports.
When a guy promises to put the #StanleyCup on your bar. And then he does. #Ovi #nicksriversidegrill
A post shared by Tony & Joe's Seafood Place (@tonyandjoes) on Jun 9, 2018 at 3:00pm PDT
Except, Philip Pritchard, the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Keeper of the Cup, told The Washington Post that he has grown increasingly weary of the dangers that Cup stands pose to participants and the trophy:
“We ask them politely not to do it. We’re trying to preserve the history of the Stanley Cup. We don’t want any unnecessary damage to it or a person, in case they drop the person or he presses too hard or something.”
There’s a very real possibility that 2018 could mark the first and last time anyone takes a Cup stand.
“We’ll see what happens as we move forward with the Cup,” added Pritchard added, via The Washington Post. “At the end of September, the Cup is going in to get engraved and updated and cleaned and everything, so we’ll see how it is because we have to take it apart then and everything. We’ll know probably more then, in early October, once it’s back for the home opener. Our biggest thing is respect for it.”
The Hockey Hall of Fame has been increasingly more lenient with the Stanley Cup under Pritchard’s three-decade watch, allowing every member of the team to take a turn with the trophy, first on the ice immediately after a title victory and then during the summer, when each player spends a day with it.
The Stanley Cup has had its share of weird stories, from sinking to the bottom of Mario Lemieux’s swimming pool to serving as a toilet for Kris Draper’s infant daughter. It’s been eaten out of, both by players and Kentucky Derby-winning horses, and incorporated into a stripper’s dance routine.
In 2015, Keeper of the Cup Mike Bolt told TIME.com that the Stanley Cup’s strip-club days were cut short when “things got kind of crazy in the ’80s and ’90s,” because “you can’t have a girl lifting her top up around the Cup.” Teammates around the Cup can’t lift a guy over the top of it, either, I guess.
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Ben Rohrbach is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
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