St. Paul school kids get a surprise visit from the Stanley Cup
The star guest at a St. Paul school's surprise assembly stands 34 1/4 inches tall, weighs 35 pounds, is 97 percent silver and bears more than 2,400 names.
Hockey's Stanley Cup appeared Monday in the Horace Mann School gym, brought there as the Minnesota Wild opens the home portion of its 2016 playoff run.
Minnesota Wild players kept their distance from the cup while it was in town, a team official said. Players are superstitious about getting too close to the trophy before actually winning it.
Mike Bolt, the so-called Keeper of the Cup, gave the elementary students a history lesson and took a range of questions:
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Where did it get its name? Lord Stanley, then the Governor General of Canada, bought it in 1892 for $48.67 as an amateur trophy and became the NHL's trophy many years later.
Has it ever been stolen? "Not on my watch," Bolt said. There have been attempts but none successful.
What's been eaten out of it? Lots of cereal, some sushi and plenty of drinks.
Where's it been? On golf courses, the White House, Russia's Kremlin, atop mountains for sunrise or sunset.
What's it worth? "It's priceless," Bolt told the kids. "It's like anything. You cannot buy it. There's no amount of money. You have to go out and earn it to get it."
With that, the children crowded around the sport's crown jewel for a picture.
Correction (April 18, 2016): A headline on an earlier version of this story incorrectly described Horace Mann School students as middle-schoolers. Horace Mann is an elementary school.