Last week, Stanley III arrived in Lou! It was brought back by the St Louis Blues. While no one has ever heard Stanley talk……in his long lifetime, he’s had quite a life….one with several traditions flying around it….some tidbits on our new friend, Stan III…..
..The Stanley Cup is named after Lord Stanley of Preston who was the 1892 Governor General of Canada. He purchased the decorative cup for about $50 then donated it (him) to be an award for Canada’s top amateur hockey club. It was awarded for the first time in 1893 to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Assn .
…annually, Stanley is hoisted over the players head by both hands, generally kissed gently and then skating around the rink with it high above the players held in their arms with huge smiles
…then up to 52 names from the organization are meticulously etched onto the cup. Over the years there have been misspellings (believe it or not)….the worst was in 1996 when Colorado Av’s Adam Deadmarsh’s name was spelled “Deadmarch”. When he publicly proclaimed how heartbroken that he was over the misspelling, for the only known time, it was stamped out and corrected. Others just remain…misspelled…sometimes…even the name of the team has been misspelled!
….who has their name most often on Stanley’s Cup? Henri Richard (younger bro of Maurice the Rocket Richard) is on the Stanley 11 times. Scotty Bowman is the most for a coach with 9 NHL championships.
…Stanley then goes on a tour. Each player of the winning team gets 24 hours of companionship with Stanley. These fleeting flirtations, while there is always a NHL chaperone to monitor the activities, have led to some real escapades. Stanley has often been used as a Champaign cup for parties; babies have been baptized from the water in Stanley; at least once, he was used as a cereal bowl; another time or 2…he was tossed into a swimming pool to see if he could float….he could not…so he had to be rescued from the bottom of the pool; one fan in 1962 tried stealing Stanley. In Chicago, a Montreal fan said when caught walking out the door, “it belongs in Montreal”…duh!
…Stanley has really been abandoned at times….while driving back after a wild celebration, the Ottawa Hockey Club had a flat tire. To reach the spare tire, Stanley was taken out of the trunk and put on the side of the road…the tire was replaced….anxious to get to the next party, the car took off quickly …..and yep….Stanley spent the entire night shivering on the side of the road. The next morning….
coming to their normal senses….the players drove back to the spot on the road that they had replace the flat….and …there was Stanley. No kind words would soothe Stanley after being ignored in that manner! But that wasn’t the first time a Montreal hockey team had forgotten the Cup. The 1907 Montreal Wanderers left it at the home of a team photographer; the photographer’s mother used the Cup as a flower pot until the team came back to retrieve it! Way back in 1905, members of the Ottawa Senators may have celebrated their victory a bit too much. After the team banquet, some …shall we say… not so sober…brought the trophy outside and tried kicking the then small-Cup into the Rideau Canal. Once successful, they staggered their way home and had no memory of it…until the next day when it was retrieved out of the canal and given to the most responsible player on the team for safekeeping ….I guess that means that he didn’t drink?
…. Like many men…Stanley has been to war. He was taken to an active war zone at Camp Nathan Smith(filled with Americans & Canadians) in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for a meet and greet. Like all … leaving the war zone, put him back at ease.
…Some think that Stanley III MAY have a curse attached if it (he) is disrespected. There are two situations that may lead one to think that Stanley III has some unknown power. A) During the ’39-’40 season, the mortgage on the Rangers’ home rink was finally paid off. To celebrate, the management of the team symbolically burned the mortgage documents in the bowl of the Stanley Cup. Then, left-winger Lynn Patrick and his teammates…. Allegedly…. urinated into the Cup’s bowl to celebrate their victory. The Rangers finally took home the trophy again in 1994 (54 years later), but they haven’t won hockey’s ultimate prize in the last 25 years. B) The Edmonton Oilers were a force to be reckoned with in the 1980s. Between 1984 and 1990, the team won five Stanley Cups and were led by two hockey greats, Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier. Legend has it that after their 1986-87 win, Messier brought the Cup to an Edmonton strip club and set the trophy on the main stage. One of the ladies dancing at the club then reportedly , incorporated the Cup into her risqué routine. The Oilers haven’t won the Cup since 1990! You decide if Stanley’s disrespect leads to a curse?!?
So….Stanley III is currently in the hands of the Blues after a series that saw….the Blues dominate in 5 on 5 (game 7 had just 1 penalty) The Blues had a 15-10 edge in goals scored during the 337:11 of 5-on-5 ice time through seven games. St. Louis had a 7-4 edge in 5-on-5 goals in the last three games, including a 6-2 advantage in Game 5 and Game 7 combined which were both in Boston. The Blues also held a 48-44 edge in high-danger scoring chances created during 5-on-5 play versus the Bruin’s, as well as a 9-4 edge in goals scored on those high-danger chances. Binnington kept the Blues during the first 10 minutes of game 7 with some cool-headed, quick-moving saves. Maybe…..the Bruins felt pressure. This was the Bruins first-ever Stanley Cup Game 7 at home, and the first Game 7 since the Bruins beat Vancouver in 2011. The “checking” in game 7 was much more restrained by both teams….I suppose….everyone feared a penalty. The first 5 games especially….were really vicious. The Blues were “opportunistic” in game 7 as they scored despite having little control of the puck in their offensive zone while the Bruins DID have territorial control and blistered the Blues GK with shots in the early going….towards the end of the 1st period, that also came to a halt. As a Boston newspaper put it, “This wasn’t a close game lost in a blaze of anger due to a terrible call or a nasty hit. The Blues just straight up won and the Bruins just straight up lost, thanks to two early St. Louis goals from Ryan O’Reilly and Alex Pietrangelo. The Bruins never figured out a way to answer, despite taking about a million shots right at the center of Blues goalie Jordan Binnington’s chest. The Blues held the 2–0 lead until the third period, when they scored twice more. Boston got on the board thanks to a goal from Matt Grzelcyk.” Apparently, despite his advanced age…Stanley III has found a romance with Gloria in recent weeks. Rumors are circulating about their “made for each other. But…that’s not my field…I’m not Ann Landers……..for now…..Let’s enjoy the company of Stan III and let handle him handle his own luv life 

Looking back at time, Stan I had a MUCH, MUCH longer stay in the Lou. “Stan the Man” was his nickname. Here was the epitome of the gentle warrior who battled at the plate each and every day for 22 (all spent as a Cardinal). Because only the ol’ guys remember seeing Stan I in action…here’s a capsule of some of his baseball accomplishments—3630 hits, career OPS of .976 (over 22 years!!).. led the NL in doubles (8x), triples (5x) but never led the league in Home runs despite taking 475 trips around the bases, league MVP 3x and voted 2nd in MVP voting another 4x, an All-Star for 20 straight years ….ignoring the missed year due to Military service in WWII….but despite all of these unbelievable baseball achievements, Stan I was the best of gentleman. He played hard on the field, was a vital cog in the integration of the Cardinals (as I understand it, he coaxed the Africa-Americans to join the card games that the players used to pass time)..who was going to object? I never recall Stan being involved in an argument with an umpire or “showing up” another player. According to the Baseball Scholar Publication, he’s listed as the 11th best player of ALL-TIME in the MLB!!! After his playing career, Stan I spent one season as the general manager—1967. The Cardinals won the World Series that year over…..yep…Boston! Stan I was a soft spoken, genuinely happy man who lived in the Lou for his entire professional and post-career life. He loved to make people smile (he’d play “Take me out to the Ballgame” on his harmonica in his later years to entertain his fans). Stan I was the type of man that fathers would point out to their sons, “be like the Man”.

As genuinely nice Stan I was as a person, Stan II fell into the opposite end. Ironically, Stan II was actually named after Stan I as he was born in Mora, Missouri. He was highly successful in real estate then married into the Walton family (Walmart). On April 13, 1995, Stan Kroenke helped Georgia Frontiere move the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis by purchasing a 30% share of the team. In 2010, Stan II exercised his right of first refusal to buy the remaining interest in the Rams from the estate of late owner Georgia Frontiere. On August 25, 2010, he became full owner of the Rams by unanimous consent of the NFL. Using language in the original move in 2013, Stan II began the process of moving the Rams. He would have found some way to do it. By 2016, the Rams had moved back to the LA area…in a new stadium..under the leadership of Stan II. Stan II was..and is… loathed by the vast majority of the Lou …as is the entire NFL ..due to what was perceived as the deception, money-grab, selfishness and just wrong moves with plenty of lies that led to the departure from the Lou. The antagonism towards Stan II hasn’t diminished much…if at all….since those dark days of 2013-2016. The Rams Super Bowl victory in 2000 over Tennessee was quickly erased by the 2002 loss to New England (fancy name for Boston) as the Patriots come-from-behind win seemed to sink the Rams ship on the post-season waters.
Sooo….there you have it…..Stan I, Stan II and now Stan III…the Good, the Bad and the Pretty (you didn’t think that I’d say Ugly, did you?) Now…to the sports world OUTSIDE the Stanley’s …

Odds & Ends….
…and then there was the Blues parade & rally! WOW! It was terrific. I’m NOT a parade watching type of guy….but …this one was different…way different. The players interacted with the crowd. They made the crowd part of the celebration. They hopped on & off their trucks ….taking selfies, letting them actually touch Stanley III, spraying Champaign on them, high five’s with the fans, leading cheers, signing autographs, etc, etc with them! It was GREAT! The rally with thousands of people packed around the Arch Grounds followed ( almost 45 minutes late). After announcing each player, they spent almost an hour recognizing many of the key players and team officials in a special way. It was almost anticlimactic after the excitement of the parade but nonetheless, it kept me watching it.
…..by far the easiest…most cupcake part ….of the schedule for the Cards just arrived at the right time as the Cards crawled out of Chicago after being swept in 3 games. Sure….everyone plays 162 games but some parts of the schedule are easier …or harder…than other parts. Playing the woeful Miami Marlins team in two series with the NY Mets sandwiched between them, allows the Cards to build up a significant winning stretch of ball for 10 games. Miami really is a discredit to MLB…this team doesn’t even appear to be trying to develop a winning team.
….seeing the Mets for just 2 days….it’s very easy to see a major cause of their lowly place in the standing…..their bullpen imploded against the Cards. The Mets brought in Edwin Diaz to be their closer…he was unbelievable last year for Seattle…65 games, 57 saves, 73 inn, 41 hits, era 1.96. This year…not so much! Not only did he “blow the game” against the Cards but he’s not the same pitcher…25 g, 14 saves, 27 inn, 28 hits, era 3.58. Last year, the Mets “gave up” on their closer. Meanwhile, the setup man, Jeurys Familia, who was the closer last year prior before being shipped out to Oakland. He was brought back this off season by the Mets. He’s still having troubles…real troubles. His current ERA is 6.91! Even worse he’s permitting OVER 1 home run permitted for each inning! The Mets aren’t that good…probably no team is…to mount a winning streak without a good backend of the bullpen… much less, a weak ….to mediocre…. Backend of the pen.
….As Flag Day has come & gone…..check out these “fresh” names in the top 10 of MLB averages….#1 Cody Bellinger (LAD). #2 Christian Yelich, #3 Jeff McNeil (NYM), #4 Jorge Polanceo (Minn), #5 David Dahl (Col), #8 Austin Meadows (Tampa Bay) #9 Josh Bell (Pitt), #10 Tim Anderson (CWS). Side note…how about Yelich being tied for #4 spot(15) in MLB in stolen bases!! What an all-around player!

Well…..I’m going to ice the puck for the final time of this season now….I appreciate you making it through the entire blog…. and …..for one final time….LGB!! Stanley Cup Champions!!!!! If you received this, please hit reply. Some are not receiving it via my new distribution system sooo…I’m trying to reach everyone…one way or the other.