Those "unofficial" names on the Stanley Cup...

[tarheelhockey]

So, today I was lucky enough to be in Toronto and spend some time at the Hall of Fame. My favorite room is (of course) the Grand Hall where you view the various awards and plaques.

In the vault, I took some time to look at the original Stanley Cup bowl, and noticed something I hadn't in previous visits: names etched into the silver, graffiti-style, in the margins between the official inscriptions. It looks like they were just scratched right in there with a pinpoint of some kind.

Due to the glass case, I couldn't get close enough to read many of them clearly. Two, however, stood out as being clearly legible:

Marty Walsh
Fred W Taylor

I believe that these would have been etched in 1909, based on both Marty Walsh and Cyclone Taylor being together on the Cup-winning Ottawa team that year.

There were MANY more names scratched into the margins that were simply not legible from a distance. Does anyone know more about them? I've never heard about this graffiti at all, so it was a bit of a shock to see it and especially to recognize the names as HOF'ers themselves.

 

[tarheelhockey]

No responses... is this an obscure topic or did I do a poor job explaining it?

 

[Killion]

... no, pretty easy to understand. Your telling me there appears to be amateur engravings on the Stanley Cup? I dont know anything about that but I do know that there have been 4 official engravers over the life of the Stanley Cup however.... entirely possible that before the NHL employed Stewards to keep an eye on it when the teams won it & went out partying, some of these guys might very well have pulled out a pocket knife and added a name, like Kilroy Was Here type dealeo. Mebbe the name of their sweetheart or a favorite Cocker Spaniel..... Did you ask a HHOF employee? Someone must know down there. Nothing on their site about it. Just that there are a lot of womens names on it. Wives of owners primarily including Margeurite Norris of course of the the Red Wings.

 

[MiamiScreamingEagles]

Did you notice if their names were the last alphabetically? Just a stab in the dark that perhaps it has something to do with their last names starting with T and W. Perhaps space limitations?

Also, saw this though I am not familiar with the sequence of events:

Conn Smythe's son Stafford Smythe (who later served as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1958 to 1970) is the youngest person to be engraved on the Stanley Cup, engraved in 1932 at age 11. His name was also engraved sideways on the original ring. It was engraved the correct way on the newer version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Stanley_Cup_Finals

 

[MadArcand]

The cup's principal mystery concerns Ottawa-born Harry "Punch" Broadbent, whose name appears upside down along the outer rim of the bowl.

Broadbent won the 1926 NHL championship with the Montreal Maroons after being traded from his beloved Ottawa Senators. His name appears on the Stanley Cup's first ring with 17 of his Montreal teammates.

But Broadbent's name also stands virtually alone on the outer bowl. The inner bowl contains the names of 29 players from the 1907 Montreal Wanderers - the first team to engrave its roster - and the 1915 Vancouver Millionaires. Broadbent didn't play with either team.

Broadbent won three Stanley Cups while playing for the Senators in the early 1920s, but the names of his teammates do not appear on the trophy. (Engraving the rosters of victorious teams didn't become an annual tradition until 1924.)

"It's one of those great Stanley Cup stories: we're not sure why he's there," said Pritchard.

That's from my old ATD bio on Broadbent. Dunno where that quote is originally from anymore though.

 

[tarheelhockey]

... no, pretty easy to understand. Your telling me there appears to be amateur engravings on the Stanley Cup? ... some of these guys might very well have pulled out a pocket knife and added a name, like Kilroy Was Here type dealeo.

That's exactly what I mean -- completely amateur, graffiti-style etchings that look like they were made with a knife or other sharp handheld tool.

I've never heard anything about this subject, but they're plainly obvious to the naked eye if you look closely at the original bowl. Looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a gas station bathroom.

 

[Killion]

Looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a gas station bathroom.

Most definitely mustve been done in the late 19th through early 20th century then huh?. Original Bowl n' all.... Back when the Cup was left by the side of a country road, in a photographers studio, spent a night in the Rideau Canal up in Ottawa, on & on. Drunken Shenanigans.

What other points of interest did you discover at the HHOF?

 

[mrhockey193195]

That's exactly what I mean -- completely amateur, graffiti-style etchings that look like they were made with a knife or other sharp handheld tool.

I've never heard anything about this subject, but they're plainly obvious to the naked eye if you look closely at the original bowl. Looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a gas station bathroom.

Honestly, this sounds awesome. Not that I'd want current players to tamper with the cup, but the fact that this sort of thing exists from over a hundred years ago just adds to the history and intrigue of the trophy.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I managed to find a picture that illustrates what I'm talking about!

This is from the HHOF website and captioned:
"A close-up of the original Stanley Cup. Note the faint etchings on the original bowl. Apparently, some players that had won the trophy before the tradition of inscribing entire rosters on the bowl took it upon themselves to etch on their own names."

While doing some light research on the topic, I've uncovered an interesting twist -- those same 1909 Sens were the first team to add a new ring to the bottom of the trophy since the original design in 1893.

Prior to the addition of this new ring, it had been a couple of years since anyone had made a new engraving; the Wanderers won it five times in a row, but only commemorated their first win with an engraving -- on the inside of the bowl itself, and that was the first time anyone had listed their roster. After that they just stopped, out of real estate.

Could it be that the Sens players, having won the trophy back and seeing the Wanderers' extravagant list of players and executives, irreverently "fixed" the problem of having no space to engrave their names? And that this action spurred team officials to spring for the addition of a new ring to discourage copycat damage?

Most definitely mustve been done in the late 19th through early 20th century then huh?. Original Bowl n' all.... Back when the Cup was left by the side of a country road, in a photographers studio, spent a night in the Rideau Canal up in Ottawa, on & on. Drunken Shenanigans.

I have this image of the Silver Seven (who, based on Taylor and Walsh, were surely the culprits) passing a few bottles around and deciding to leave their own mark on the trophy. I mean, this had to have been done in a smoky train car, right?

What other points of interest did you discover at the HHOF?

Oh, you know as well as I do that every corner of the place is full of goodies to make hockey history geeks swoon.

Probably my favorite surprise this time around was finding the old Riley Cup in the "defunct trophies" section. I was close to the Charlotte Checkers team that won it in '96, and it was retired that summer. There it was in the glass case, forever listing that team as the defending champs

 

[McGuillicuddy]

Kilroy Was Here

No, I don't think Kilroy spent any time in the show. Only in the OHL and in the minors. .