Where the Stanley Cup goes, so do its Keepers

In 32 years as the Keeper of the Cup, Phil Pritchard had never seen a Stanley Cup celebration quite like the boat parade that floated the Tampa Bay Lightning up the Hillsborough River through downtown Tampa, fans lining both banks to welcome the champions home after 65-consecutive days in Toronto and Edmonton bubbles produced the organization's second-ever Stanley Cup.

With COVID restrictions continuing, there are sure to be more non-traditional ways of celebrating with the Stanley Cup for the Lightning this offseason.
Pritchard is one of five people who guard and protect and shuttle the Cup from one place to the next. Pritchard was in the Edmonton bubble at the conclusion of the Cup Final - two of the southernmost teams in the NHL contesting the final in the League's northernmost city -- and carried the Cup along with Craig Campbell onto the ice before resting it on a table for the trophy presentation after the Lightning defeated the Dallas Stars in six games. He flew back to Tampa on the Bolts team charter, witnessed each player high-fiving Lightning owner Jeff Vinik as they deplaned, saw the emotional reunion of players, coaches and staff with their families on the tarmac following the lengthy postseason run spent entirely away from home.
Pritchard will switch off with other Cup Keepers based on geography. For example, if the Cup's going west, he can rendezvous with another Cup Keeper in a connecting city and hand it over.
This year, there won't be as many Cup Keepers because some of the guys only work in the summer. "They teach sports in schools, so they're not available," Pritchard said. This being 2020, the Stanley Cup was presented to the Lightning September 28, more than three months after it would typically be awarded. The Lightning organization will get to keep the Cup through October, November and December ahead of the NHL's targeted start date of January 1 for the 2020-21 season.
The Stanley Cup has remained in Tampa over the two-and-a-half weeks since the Lightning were crowned NHL champions for the first time since 2004.
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Some Lightning players took it to Raymond James Stadium for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL game against the Los Angeles Chargers. Alex Killorn, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos got a picture around the Cup with supermodel Gisele Bundchen, wife of Bucs quarterback Tom Brady.
"We weren't allowed to bring (the Cup) out like a traditional thing, but they filmed it from the suite we were in," said Pritchard, who went back to Toronto on Wednesday to start his required 14-day quarantine for an appointment later this month he couldn't miss. Campbell has remained with the Cup in Tampa. Pritchard will reunite with the Cup in Tampa in early November. "I think in all the cases that we're doing, whether it's the boat parade or to a NFL game or to a hospital visit where we don't enter the hospital, we stay outside, or a school and the same thing, they're doing some great things."
When the aforementioned parade reached the Tampa Convention Center, a jet ski pulled up alongside a boat containing Killorn, Mathieu Joseph, Tyler Johnson and Anthony Cirelli. Killorn switched places with the jet ski driver and scooted across the river toward another boat chauffeuring Stamkos and the Stanley Cup.
Killorn picked up the captain and the Cup and cruised around the basin with both to the delight of the fans.
Surely, Pritchard had to wonder if he might be fishing the Cup out of the water later if things went awry?
"(Alex) has so much respect for not only the team, the league, the game and obviously the Stanley Cup, so there are no worries the Cup was going anywhere," Pritchard said. "I think what is great about all these guys that have won it is they've worked their lifetimes towards this pinnacle, and they're not going to do anything disrespectful to the Tampa Bay Lightning organization, the National Hockey League, the history of the game and, of course, the greatest trophy in sports as well."
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The Stanley Cup has been busy this past week.
Last Friday, a group of Lightning players brought the Cup with them on a boat excursion to Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay. Later that night, Killorn was eating lobster bisque out of the Cup at Bern's Steak House.
Saturday, head coach Jon Cooper visited multiple bars around Tampa with the Cup. He surprised a bachelorette party at District Tavern. There was a Florida Gators game watch at The Patio to crash. The Cup made appearances at the Hub and Hattrick's among other establishments before Cooper brought the Cup to his Anna Maria home, but not before showing it off at some restaurants he and his family frequent on the island.
"One of the things he said is, 'These people are important to me. They're a reason why we won.' They were like family to him," Pritchard recalled of his conversation with Cooper that day. "When you hear those type of things of who the guys want to thank and why, to me, that's what makes the Stanley Cup so special is because they understand it's much more than the guys on the ice. It's all these other people. It's the hospital visits we've been doing, the school visits and things like that. They're all part of this whole celebration."
Sunday, the Cup was at AMALIE Arena where Lightning employees and their families snapped pictures on the ice with it.
The next day, the Lightning took it to local police stations and fire departments, giving first responders an up-close view of the Cup. Tuesday, it was shuttled to the Lightning's TGH Ice Plex practice facility where youth hockey players, including children of Cooper and Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois, were practicing.
It's visited three mayors: Jane Castor (Tampa), Rick Kriseman (St. Petersburg) and Eric Seidel (Oldsmar). It's been to Avila Golf and Country Club. Jesuit High School. University of Tampa.
"We spent one afternoon at Steven Stamkos' house on the water," Pritchard said. "And I think we're going there tonight again too for a dinner."

Braydon Coburn brought the Cup in a convertible to his kids' school Wednesday morning.
"They want to share it with those people," Pritchard said. "They know they didn't get there by themselves, and I think maybe a nickname for the Stanley Cup could be the People's Cup because they want to share it with everybody."
Since 1995, players, coaches and club personnel from each championship team get their own day with the Stanley Cup. They can take it back to their home country, show up at their childhood rink, introduce it to all those individuals who helped along the way in the journey to obtain the Cup.
But in these COVID times, those opportunities might not be possible.
"We're working regularly with not only the team but the League and the medical people to see what we can come up with," Pritchard said. "As you can see, we've had a lot of great celebrations so far, trying to follow all the procedures and social distancing and masks and all those things…I wish I could tell you we could travel to every guy, but we can't say that right now. We're working. We've got all different ideas, and it's going to be a unique time for sure."
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When the Lightning won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 2004, Pritchard was along for the ride as the Cup went to Russia with Dmitry Afanasenkov. Freddy Modin drank champagne out of the Cup from his hometown of Sundsvall, Sweden. Nikolai Khabibulin was the first player ever to bring the Cup to Belarus, where his wife was from.
"Every time you get to go to a new place, a new culture, it always stands out," Pritchard said.
Martin St. Louis brought the Cup to the University of Vermont where he played collegiately before heading up to his parents' home in Laval, Quebec.
Brad Richards, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2004 as the most valuable player to his team's postseason success, brought the Cup lobster fishing on Prince Edward Island.
"They caught a lobster, and sat it right in the bowl," Pritchard said. "I think it was one of the first times the Cup had gone to P.E.I. for a player as well."
Pritchard and his fellow Keepers are responsible for cleaning the Cup while it's on the road. In the age of COVID, that means cleaning it twice, once to kill the bacteria and a second time to remove the bacteria.
"We're doing everything possible to make sure it looks as great as it always does," Pritchard said. "At 127 years old, I think it looks pretty good. But at the same time, we're making sure that everything is clean and follows all the rules and regulations that we're trying to abide by."
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The Lightning will benefit from one Cup celebration abnormality. Typically, each person gets their day with the Cup in the summer and then it's sent to Montreal near the start of the following season for engraving so the championship team can see their names on it for the first time during Opening Night festivities.
The 2020 Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning will have their names chiseled in next week. The Cup is scheduled to travel to Montreal on Wednesday and will return to Tampa after about 10 days.
"It's going to be the first time the guys actually see their names on it with the possibility of celebrating with it," Pritchard said. "Usually, it's done at the end of the tour, but we're doing it early."
Pat Maroon won his second-consecutive Stanley Cup this season with the Lightning after hoisting it for the first time in 2019 with his hometown St. Louis Blues, becoming just the third player in the expansion era to have won championships in back-to-back seasons with different teams.
Maroon kept the Cup in St. Louis for his day with it last July. He visited a mall where he played in-line hockey as a kid. He ate toasted ravioli out of the bowl. There was a lake party with champagne being poured out of the Cup from a deck above into the mouths of the swimmers below.
Maroon never saw his name on the Cup though.
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The Blues had yet to have their team etched permanently on the trophy when it went around to each player over the summer. Maroon wasn't in St. Louis when the Cup came back from engraving for the Blues' season-opening celebration because he signed as a free agent with Tampa Bay in the offseason.
The first time Maroon saw his name on the Stanley Cup was in the Lightning locker room inside Edmonton's Rogers Place after winning it a second time immediately after the Game 6 victory over the Dallas Stars.
"To see that, it was pretty special," Pritchard said. "I think when guys look back on that and see Pat waited a year to see his name and they're going to see it in the first few weeks, I'm hoping it brings a positive to a difficult time. But we're trying. We're coming up with all ideas, and there are no bad ideas, just some work out better than others in this COVID world. We're doing our best."