Montreal Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau holds the coveted Stanley Cup, his team's prize in 1971 for vanquishing the Chicago Blackhawks in seven games.The Associated Press
“TOUCHE PAS!”
“DON’T TOUCH!”
Jean Ledoux and Chantal Dubord are standing on the far edge of Ottawa’s Sparks Street mall, camera pointed at Lord Stanley’s Gift Monument. It is a large steel bowl-like structure erected a few years back in tribute to the Stanley Cup, which was born but a few long steps away.
Everyone knows the lore: No player is ever to touch the holy grail of hockey until he – or perhaps one day she – actually wins it.
The retired couple are not players, but fervent fans visiting the nation’s capital from their home in Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Rouville, a tiny community along Quebec’s South Shore not far from Montreal.
They, along with millions of other Canadians, are hoping that Les Glorieux, the Habs, the Montreal Canadiens, can somehow bring the Stanley Cup home to Canada. The team first, however, has to win its best-of-seven series against the smothering Carolina Hurricanes, the other team in the NHL’s Eastern Conference final. The winner of that series, which begins Thursday night in Raleigh, N.C., will move on to the Stanley Cup final.
Cathal Kelly: Canadiens channel spirit of 1993 as they march onward
Virtually beside the monument to the Stanley Cup is a bronze statue titled Joy by sculptor Bruce Garner. It features a family of four dancing and celebrating with a few “elbows up” – the hockey metaphor that was used a year ago to tell U.S. President Donald Trump’s hopes of making Canada the “51st state” to take a hike.
There is an “elbows up” aspect to the 2026 Stanley Cup as well, with the Montreal Canadiens the only hope this country has left this spring in finally bringing that Cup home.
American teams may have won both men’s and women’s hockey gold at this year’s Milan Olympics – the men’s victory wildly celebrated by Trump and his inner circle – but hockey will forever be “Canada’s Game” and the Stanley Cup hockey’s greatest prize, with apologies to Pierre de Coubertin and his Modern Olympics.
There is nothing the retired couple from the South Shore would rather see than their beloved Canadiens bringing that great symbol home.
“My father was a huge fan,” says Ledoux. “I was a fan of the Canadiens since I was one month old.”
“I listened to the radio broadcast every Saturday night with my dad,” adds Dubord. “It was the glory years, but after that my interest went down – until now!”
They both remember well the glory years of Guy Lafleur, Jean Beliveau, Ken Dryden and so many other past stars of the Habs. But all that was so very long ago.
No Canadian team has claimed the Cup since the 1993 Canadiens, who won multiple overtime games in all four playoff rounds.The Canadian Press
June 9 will mark 33 years since a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup. In the late spring of 1993, the Canadiens won an extraordinary 10 overtime games as they marched to victory.
NHL historian Dave Stubbs says that to get a real sense of how long ago that was, fans should remember that the big movie of that moment was Jurassic Park. He jokes that “dinosaurs were actually roaming the earth the last time a Canadian team won the Cup.”
Only two players on the 2025-26 roster were even alive the last time the Cup returned to its place of birth. Brendan Gallagher was 13 months old, Phillip Danault was three-and-a-half months old.
This year’s team is, in fact, the youngest team in the NHL, with an average age of 25.66. The Hurricanes average 28.88 years. (The league’s oldest team is Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins, at 30.81 years average.)
Youth has carried the Canadiens this far. Captain Nick Suzuki is 26, star scorer Cole Caufield is 25, rising star defenceman Lane Hutson is 22, rookie goaltender Jakub Dobes only 24.
There is no one alive who recalls the early years of the Stanley Cup, which was introduced to hockey just a slapshot away from this Sparks Street statue at the long-forgotten Russell Hotel.
It was here, on the evening of March 18, 1892, that Lord Kilcoursie, aide-de-camp to Governor-General Lord Stanley, rose to read a letter from his boss, who was not in attendance, to the rather inebriated crowd.
“I have for some time been thinking,” wrote the Governor-General, “that it would be a good thing if there were a challenge cup which should be held from year to year by the champion hockey team in the Dominion of Canada.”
The suggestion was soundly cheered and arrangements were made to purchase a silver punch bowl back in London for 10 guineas, roughly $50. The trophy was first presented in 1893 to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association. The NHL would not be formed for nearly a quarter of a century.
Today, more than 134 years later, that ancient cup is the ultimate symbol of hockey prowess. The Russell Hotel has long since burned down – some believed it was arson – and while teams from the Dominion of Canada have periodically challenged, most recently last year’s Edmonton Oilers, none has managed the feat that so many wish for – particularly in this time of American Olympic hockey triumphs and the arrogance of current American politics.
Women’s hockey has no such worries – the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s championship was claimed by the Montreal Victoire Wednesday night after an all-Canadian final against the Ottawa Charge.
Superstitions may well help the men.
No one this sunny afternoon touches Lord Stanley’s Gift Monument.
A young girl ambles by wearing a No. 13 jersey with Caufield on the back.
A nearby memorial to animals that served Canada during international conflicts has horseshoes imprinted on the cement base.
And a fountain near where the Russell Hotel once stood has a single coin glistening beneath the ripples of cascading water.
Can there be such a thing as a “Lucky Quarter?”