Breaking Ritchie Duncan's Heart

I've written before about my pal, Ritch Duncan. He's a fellow Mighty Squirrel, a top notch hockey blogger, and an all around good guy. And I'm about to shatter his dreams.

For the past couple of days Ritchie has been blogging on American Hockey Fan about the marketing efforts to launch the new NHL store in Manhattan. Ritchie is going up there today to get his first glimpse at that most beloved of hockey icons, the Stanley Cup.

Except, not really. The Cup that is generally brought out to these events is a replica cup created in 1995. Why would the league create a copy of hockey's holy grail? Blame the Rangers.

You see back in 1994 the boys got a little raucous and managed to break Lord Stanley's mug in to three different pieces. After the repair effort the league decided that it might be better not to have so much wear and tear on their beloved trophy so the replica was created.

For the record, I was lucky enough to drink out of the Stanley Cup during that amazing June in 1994 and then see the cup up close again later in that summer (I had friends who worked for the Rangers organization and they had it at their house!). The next summer, another friend of mine who was a die hard Devils fan dragged me to Jimmy Dowd's bar to see the cup. At that point I didn't mind seeing him get all gushy about a fake trophy. After all, he was a Claude Lemieux fan who had dragged me to Brick, NJ.

But Ritchie man. He deserves better.

Because in this new hockey world of hi tech sweaters, hockey themed Starbucks and franchises in Nashville every real hockey fan should be able to see the embodiment of everything we love about the sport.

And it doesn't get any more real than that.