I read about this group, Free Stanley, in this morning’s Wall Street Journal here (subscription req’d). Three Canadian hockey fans from Edmonton want the trustees of the Stanley Cup to award the cup to some non-NHL team. According to the Free Stanley website, the mission is:
Free Stanley’s mission is to make sure there are Stanley Cup playoffs this hockey season. We love the Stanley Cup playoffs and we love the Cup. We believe it is the best trophy in all of sport, and it should not be denied to the best hockey team is playing this season. If there is no NHL season the Stanley Cup should then be awarded to the best hockey team in Canada, which was Lord Stanley’s original intent for the Cup.
But the problem, according to the Wall Street Journal article is this:
Even so, the chances of reviving the Stanley Cup this year are slim. The cup’s trustees maintain that the cup won’t be awarded this year because the NHL season was canceled in February. Under a 1947 agreement between the trustees and the NHL, the league controls the competition for the Cup.
This reminds me of the calls for baseball fans to become free agents in order to get their teams to pay more attention to their interests. But because fans interests are so dispersed, these calls go unheeded. Will Stanley’s cup be freed? Stay tuned, sports fans.
