Adventures of the Stanley Cup

As the Bruins chase their second Stanley Cup title in three years, the prize itself is starting to seize plenty of time in the spotlight, which naturally leads to the topic of the many adventures the Stanley Cup has been on.

When an NHL team wins the Stanley Cup, each player has his name engraved on it, and each player and staff member gets to spend 24 hours with the most hallowed trophy in sports.

As you can imagine, players can sometimes get pretty creative when caught up in the exuberance of victory. Here are some of the most interesting tales reported to have happened with Lord Stanley’s famed trophy.

On tour with the Bruins

After the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011, it popped up everywhere as the players and team officials had their days. Among the stops: an appearance at the Pastoral Center of the Boston Archdiocese with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who presented a check for $100 to Catholic Charities Boston stemming from a bet he won with Archbishop Frederick Miller of Vancouver, British Columbia, on the outcome of the championship, the archdiocese said.

In the months following the Bruins’ victory, Boston.com compiled a gallery of photos from its cameos. Check it out here.

Cup as a planter

Let’s go way back for a couple of these stories from the Hockey Hall of Fame. In 1907, the Montreal Wanderers took a picture with the cup but left the trophy at the home of a photographer. The photographer’s mother used it as a flower pot, and planted geraniums in it. The team eventually retrieved the cup from the photographer’s home.

Booted

Apparently it’s been popular to get sauced and make bad decisions for a long time. After winning the Cup in 1905, the Ottawa Silver Seven hit the town. After several pops, some players thought it would be a good idea to see if they could kick the trophy across the Rideau Canal. It wasn’t. The Cup never made it across, but the canal was frozen and the players were able to retrieve it the following morning.

[…] and vinegar

The 1940 New York Rangers lit the trophy on fire accidentally, then urinated on the Cup to put out the fire.

Cup goes missing

The original bowl and collar of the trophy were placed in the Hockey Hall of Fame after the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Cup in 1962. In 1970, those original portions of the Cup were stolen and went missing for seven years, only to turn up in Toronto following an anonymous tip.

Messier’s messes

Mark Messier won six Stanley Cups, so he’s likely to have plenty of stories to go along with his six allotted days with it. After winning with the Oilers in 1987, Messier brought it to his favorite Edmonton strip club, the Forum Inn, and let patrons drink out of it. In 1998, Messier dented the Cup and brought it to an automotive repair shop to get fixed.

Cup as feed bowl

Former Rangers center Ed Olczyk (not pictured) reportedly fed the 1994 Kentucky Derby winner, Go for Gin (left), out of the Cup at the Belmont Stakes after the Rangers won the Cup in 1994. Olczyk said that he simply brought the Cup to the Belmont, and no horse ate out of it. Olczyk’s name is familiar to hockey fans now as the color commentator for NHL games on NBC and Versus. After 1994, the NHL made sure a human handler traveled with the Cup at all times.

Recchi takes it to bed

Mark Recchi (pictured) and Shawn Thornton were the only Bruins to have won Stanley Cups prior to Boston’s 2011 championship . Recchi did it with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006, and on his day with the Cup, Recchi brought the trophy to his hometown of Kamloops, British Columbia, took it around town with him, and then curled up beside it in bed.

“It was my buddy that night,’’ Recchi told the Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont.

Licked

In what was supposed to be (and still, I guess, is) a promotion for the NHL, the Cup made it to the set of the television show “Heroes’’, where it was licked by actress Hayden Panettiere. Alright.

Make your colleagues jealous

The Stanley Cup is an icon of sports success, like a Masters green jacket or a jug of milk at the Indy 500. So if you’ve won one, it totally makes sense to show if off at other sports venues in your city.

That’s what Derian Hatcher did after the Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999, bringing it to a Texas Rangers game and perhaps setting in motion the events that led the Rangers to back-to-back World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011, although they lost.

Cup serves noble purpose

In contrast to many of the lurid stories concerning the Cup, Colorado Avalanche defenseman Sylvain Lefebvre’s use of the trophy is more respectable. Lefebvre christened his child in the bowl of the Stanley Cup after his team won the championship in 1996.

Bourque brings cup to Boston

Ray Bourque played 21 seasons in Boston without winning a Stanley Cup, so when he won the Cup with Colorado in the twilight of his career, he chose to do something very unorthodox on his day with the trophy: he brought the trophy back to Boston. With the Bruins in the midst of a 39-year championship drought prior to their own win in 2011, more than 10,000 people came to see Bourque and the trophy in City Hall Plaza after the Avalanche won it all in 2001.

Ice cream!

Recchi’s teammate with the 2006 Hurricanes, Doug Weight, made a giant ice cream sundae with his family and ate the ice cream out of the bowl of the Cup.

Ummmm

This one is just gross. A week after winning the Stanley Cup in 2008, Red Wings center Kris Draper put his infant daughter in the Cup. “She pooped in the Cup,’’ said Draper. “We had a pretty good laugh. I still drank out of it that night, so no worries.’’

Will it float?

The Stanley Cup has been subjected to some comedic tricks on late night television with David Letterman, but it went through a real-life “Will it float?’’ moment during a pool party at Mario Lemieux’s house in 1991, when Penguin Phil Bourque jumped into the pool with the trophy. The trophy sank.

Rinsed

Red Wings center Steve Yzerman said he showered with the Cup after Detroit won the championship in 2002.

Back to the motherland

The most common thing for a player to do beside kiss the Cup is take the trophy to his hometown. For Penguins center Evgeni Malkin, that meant a trip to Magnitogorsk, Russia, where he was photographed with it near a World War II monument.