The 2014-15 New York Rangers are still struggling just to find their way past the suddenly surging Washington Capitals in the second-round of the NHL playoffs, but should the team beat the Caps, move on through the quarterfinals and perhaps even to a Stanley Cup championship, here's to hoping they have as much fun with the Cup and the potential victory - or you know, treat the Cup with the correct measure of reverence and respect, or whatever - as Mark Messier and the 1994 NY Rangers team did.
Michael Blutrich, a mob informant and former owner of SCORES gentleman's club in Manhattan, revealed during a recent interview on 60 Minutes, during which he detailed his life as a snitch, that Messier, the former Ranger captain, and several other members of the Rangers '94 Cup-winning squad came into SCORES one night after the Finals and proceeded to party like, well, guys who had just won a Stanley Cup.
The best part?
They brought the Cup with them and drank champagne out of it.
The even better part?
They then forgot the Cup at the club.
Michael Blutrich: The New York Rangers came to Scores on the night they won the Stanley Cup, filled the Stanley Cup with champagne and shared it with everybody, and then left the Cup.
Anderson Cooper: They left the Stanley Cup there.
Michael Blutrich: They got drunk, they left the Cup.
As Greg Wyshynski of Yahoo! Sports points out, that episode in '94 didn't mark Messier's first escapade with Lord Stanley's Cup.
"In 1987 with the Edmonton Oilers, Messier allegedly brought the chalice to The Forum Inn in Edmonton, placed it on stage and it was used as a prop by the talent," writes Wyshynski. The Forum Inn is, unsurprisingly, also a strip club.
(We're starting to sense a theme here, Mark.)
Of course, there are rules in place nowadays to ensure that nothing fun or interesting or off-color that happened in the way-back-when can again take place.
Keeper of the Cup, Mike Bolt, told TIME.com that due to current restrictions, modern day winners of the Cup can't really take it anywhere fun or weird.
Did it go to a strip club? I heard it went to a strip club.
It's been to a few, probably. Things got kind of crazy in the '80s and '90s. There was some wild stuff. Things may have gone on that can't happen anymore 'cause it would be all over the Internet.
Like strip clubs?
I can't get into details, to be honest with you. But if you're throwing a party, you can't have a girl lifting her top up around the Cup. Someone will take a picture, and it will be on the Internet. The NHL is a family organization. We can't have anything X-rated.
That sounds boring, Mike, but we get it.
Then again, we here at HNGN would be willing to bet that it'd probably do the whole NHL viewing world - and the notoriously growth-hungry NHL - some good to see Henrik Lundqvist and Martin St. Louis posing sheepishly with a scantily clad co-ed and the Cup on the front page of the Times.
Just sayin...
