Today's Hockey Post...

... is different. From the WSJ… “The Stanley Cup Could Use an Editor.” Excerpts:

There are four teams remaining in the National Hockey League playoffs, and their star-studded rosters can be frightening -- especially for Louise St. Jacques, whose job is to engrave the names of the winning team's players on the Stanley Cup.

This iconic silver trophy, which is handed out each year to hockey's champion, carries with it the marks of another, quieter history -- decades of botched spellings, spacing gaffes, repeated words and the unsightly results of attempts to fix them.

Over the years words like "Ilanders" (Islanders), "Leaes" (Leafs) and "Bqstqn" (Boston) have found their way onto the cup, while more than a dozen players and coaches have had their names butchered. Former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jacques Plante had the misfortune of having his first name spelled four different ways in the span of five years.

This, of course, comes as no news to long-time hockey fans. But some of the errors are pretty funny and make for an entertaining read… like this one:

One cup quirk isn't actually a mistake, but a victim of an unfortunate change in popular lexicon. Frank Selke was an assistant manager for the Maple Leafs when they won the cup in 1945. His title is abbreviated as "ass man." Says Philip Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, "We don't tell a lot of people about the ass man," he says. "Players love the story, though."

Heh. It’s good to see hockey in the Journal, for what that’s worth. Video, too.



(Photo from the WSJ article)