Stanley Cup Finals

The Stanley Cup finals is the championship series of the NHL, held every year at the culmination of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The winner of the best-of-seven series between the Eastern and Western Conference champions is awarded the Stanley Cup, one of the most prestigious trophies in all of sports.

The NHL has been involved with the series since 1917 and has been the sole competitor for the Cup since 1927. In 1947, the league reached an agreement with the trustees of the Cup, making the Stanley Cup the official championship prize of the NHL and allowing the league to decline other challengers.

The Los Angeles Kings won the 2012 Stanley Cup finals, defeating the New Jersey Devils in six games to win their first championship.

History

The Stanley Cup finals has its roots in the Challenge Cup series that were originally used to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup. The prize was first awarded in 1893 and at the time was open to both professional and amateur teams. In 1915, an agreement between the three major professional leagues -- the NHA, the PCHA and the Maritime league -- streamlined the process for winning the Cup, and a year later, it officially became the prize for a championship series between the winners of the NHA and the PCHA.

The NHL replaced the NHA following the NHA's dissolution in 1917, and in 1927, when the WHL (the successor to the PCHA) folded, the Stanley Cup became the championship trophy of the NHL. Twenty years later, the trustees of the Cup officially granted control to the NHL, allowing the league to reject challenges from other leagues.

In the early years of the NHL's Stanley Cup finals, the series took on multiple formats. The first Stanley Cup finals under NHL control in 1927 was a best-of-three series that allowed ties. The series length went back and forth between three and five games until 1939, when it became a best-of-seven series, as it has been ever since.

When the NHL took control of the Cup in 1926-27, it was a 10-team league, but by 1942-43, the league was down to six teams. The franchises that folded combined to win two Stanley Cup finals: the original Ottawa Senators in 1927 and the Montreal Maroons in 1935. The league's reduction in size coincided with the rise of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who won the Cup six times between 1942 and 1951. The Detroit Red Wings had a run of success in the early 1950s, winning three times in four years, but for most of the '50s, '60s and '70s, the Montreal Canadiens were the league's dominant franchise.

The Canadiens won their first Stanley Cup finals in the NHL era in 1930, and repeated as champions the following year. They won two more in the 1940s, but truly started their run of dominance in 1953. That was the first of six wins in an eight-year span, including five in a row from 1956 to 1960. After going four years without winning the Cup, the Canadiens began another run in 1965, winning back-to-back titles to kick off a run of 10 Cups in 15 years.

In the 1967-68 season, the NHL expanded to 12 teams, putting the original six franchises in the East Division and the six expansion franchises in the West Division, with the winners of each division's playoffs meeting in the Stanley Cup finals. This led to the expansion St. Louis Blues reaching the finals in each of their first three years of existence, losing to the Canadiens twice and the Boston Bruins once.

In 1970-71, the NHL added two more teams and realigned the original six Chicago Blackhawks into the West Division. The league also changed the format of the playoffs so that teams from opposite divisions could meet in the semifinals, meaning the two Stanley Cup finals teams could come from the same division. That happened in 1972, when the Boston Bruins defeated the New York Rangers.

In 1974, the Philadelphia Flyers became the first expansion team to win the Stanley Cup, defeating the Bruins in six games. The Flyers repeated as champs the following season, when the NHL split its teams into the Campbell and Wales Conferences, with each conference being split into two divisions.

The 1980s were dominated by two dynasties: the New York Islanders (a 1972 expansion team) and the Edmonton Oilers (a team absorbed from the WHA). The Islanders won four consecutive Cups from 1980 to 1983, defeating the Oilers in four games to complete their four-peat. Edmonton won the rematch the following season, kicking off a run of five championships in seven seasons.

The Oilers were the first former WHA franchise to win a Stanley Cup, though that feat has since been matched by the Colorado Avalanche (formerly the Quebec Nordiques) and the Carolina Hurricanes (formerly the Hartford Whalers).

In 2004-05, the NHL owners imposed a lockout on the players, eventually wiping out the entire season. It marked the first time since 1919 -- when the final was canceled due to the flu epidemic -- that the Stanley Cup was not awarded. The NHL was sued by a group of amateur players who argued the Cup should be open to challenges. A 2006 court decision ruled that the 1947 agreement to give the NHL sole control of the Cup went against Lord Stanley's original conditions, and the league agreed that in the future, should it not be operating, it would allow other teams to play for the Cup.

Format

Since 1939, the Stanley Cup finals have been best-of-seven series. Currently the series pits the winner of the Eastern Conference playoffs against the winner of the Western Conference playoffs, as has been the case since 1994, when the NHL realigned into East and West, rather than the Campbell and Wales conferences. The league currently uses a 2-2-1-1-1, in which the team with home-ice advantage hosts the first two games, and Games 5 and 7 if necessary. Home-ice advantage is awarded to the team with the most points in the regular season.

Trophy

The Stanley Cup is widely considered to be one of the most prestigious trophies in all of sports. The trophy itself was originally just a decorative silver punch bowl, purchased by Lord Stanley of Preston to be awarded to the top amateur hockey team in Canada. Lord Stanley made five original rules for the Cup:

• 1. The winners shall return the Cup in good order when required by the trustees so that it may be handed over to any other team which may win it.
• 2. Each winning team, at its own expense, may have the club name and year engraved on a silver ring fitted on the Cup.
• 3. The Cup shall remain a challenge cup, and should not become the property of one team, even if won more than once.
• 4. The trustees shall maintain absolute authority in all situations or disputes over the winner of the Cup.
• 5. If one of the existing trustees resigns or drops out, the remaining trustee shall nominate a substitute.

The regulations were expanded and formalized by the trustees in 1893, and modified again in 1947 when control of the trophy was delegated to the NHL.

In the early years, teams would add a single ring to the bowl and engrave their team name and year of their victory, though not every team did so. Between 1920 and 1923, no team that won the Cup added a ring. The Montreal Canadiens resumed the tradition in 1924, and it has remained unbroken since then.

By the 1940s, the Cup had begun to resemble a stovepipe, due to the long neck of identical-sized rings that had been added. In 1948, the Cup was completely redesigned, becoming a two-piece trophy with a removable bowl and collar. In 1958, the modern design of the Cup was introduced, replacing the old barrel with a five-band barrel that could hold up to 65 teams. The bands were filled in 1991, and subsquently the top band was removed and donated to the Hall of Fame, and a new blank band was added to the bottom. A second band was retired in 2006, and the next one is scheduled to be retired in 2017.

The 1907 Montreal Wanderers were the first team to engrave the names of all of their players on the Cup, though that tradition did not take off immediately. The 1923-24 Canadiens, who resumed the tradition of adding an engraving, were the next team to add player names, and it became an annual tradition from that point forward. Originally only players who played in the Cup finals were allowed to have their names engraved on the Cup, though the NHL changed that restriction in 1977. Currently a player who plays at least 41 games with a team in the regular season and remains on the team when it wins the Cup, or plays at least one game in the finals, can have his name engraved. The NHL also allows for special exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

The bowl and collar on the current Stanley Cup are replacements, with the originals having become too brittle to remain on the trophy. Currently the Stanley Cup is 32.25 inches tall and weighs 34.5 pounds, dimensions that should not change with the system of retiring bands once the bottom one is filled.

Unlike in other major sports, the actual Cup transfers ownership from year to year when a new team wins it. The winning team is given 100 days during the offseason to pass the Cup around, with each member of the team traditionally getting one day to spend with it. The Cup is always accompanied by one representative from the Hockey Hall of Fame, where it lives when it is not in a team's possession. When the Cup is out of the Hall of Fame, the museum displays a replica, created in 1993. The "Presentation Cup" -- the official version created in 1963 that travels with the winner -- has been used in many interesting ways by players, including to baptize children and as a dog-food dish. Famously in 1991, the Cup ended up at the bottom of Mario Lemiuex's pool after a teammate dove in with the Cup in his arms.