Capitals Team Captain Alexander Ovechkin with his new best friend. (Photo by David Becker/NHLI via Getty Images)

Capitals Team Captain Alexander Ovechkin with his new best friend. (Photo by David Becker/NHLI via Getty Images, courtesy of Monumental Sports)

Washington Capitals team captain Alexander Ovechkin has rarely let the Stanley Cup out of his sight since the team won it in Vegas last week.

While the historic award has been part of the team’s intense celebratory bender, it’s also been alongside Ovi for some of his quieter moments, like bedtime.

Capitals spokesperson Megan Eichenberg says the cup will be on a bus with players and their families during the #ALLCAPS victory parade on Tuesday, but where does it go from there? Will it sleep in the Capital One Arena? At the Wilson Building? In Ted Leonsis’ office?

The Stanley Cup is unique among sports trophies because it’s essentially a relic. Rather than teams getting their own cup each year for winning the championship, there’s just one to rule them all.

The original cup donated by Lord Stanley 125 years ago has been retired and sits at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Canada. The one that Ovi and others have been hauling around town and guzzling various beverages out of is called the “presentation cup.” It’s the one that travels around the country.

And boy oh boy will it be gallivanting this summer. If they ever manage to cajole the 35-pound trophy from Ovi’s grip, “the Stanley Cup will go on its escapade through the course of the summer,” explains hockey historian Kevin Shea, who edits publications for the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Including its summer of love with the Caps, the cup spends the majority of its time on the road for a variety of National Hockey League functions.

Representatives of the team are huddling up with people from the Hall of Fame to formulate a plan so all of the players will get their dedicated day with the cup, Eichenberg confirms, though it hasn’t been finalized yet. The Caps will have exclusive access to the Cup for the next 100 days or so, before it returns to Canada for its official engraving.

“It’s almost like a jigsaw puzzle,” says Shea. “They try to put together a plan that geographically makes sense.”

So how have players spent their special day with the cup in the past? “You name it, from wild and wacky things to really solemn and wonderful things, too,” says Shea. “You can imagine what has been eaten out of that cup—lobster bisque, popcorn, slurpies, certainly alcohol of every manner, horses have eaten oats out of it. People have put babies in the cup and babies do what babies do.”

That’s where the official Cup Keeper comes in. This trophy has its own minder, who always wears white gloves while handling it.

“They go through a lot of white gloves in a year,” says Shea. The keepers will clean the cup each night before passing it along to the next player or coach.

This wasn’t always the tradition. Up until 1994, “the team would get it for a week, they’d take it to a few parties or whatever, but then it’d come back to the Hockey Hall of Fame,” says Shea.

Now, though, players get to dream up how to spend their special day with the cup. “I know that as the summer unravels, there will be some terrific stories,” says Shea.

There are a few unwritten rules, though: only champions are supposed to lift the cup over their heads. Plus, players who haven’t won it are often superstitious and won’t touch it, says Shea.

After it gets engraved, the finished product will return to Washington, D.C. for the official championship banner raising and the team can see their names on it.

The Stanley Cup “is currently with players, staff, and ownership,” says Eichenberg, and if it had ears, it would be hearing a whole lot of “We Are The Champions.”

Shea is delighted by the Caps’ enthusiasm. “All teams have celebrations,” he says. “But this one seems to be being enjoyed more than ever.”

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