Maple Leafs "A$$ man" etched in Stanley Cup lore

http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Maple%20Leafs%20etched%20Stanley%20lore/1656621/story.html

Misspelled names - including two Habs greats - are enduring quirks of NHL's Holy Grail


For as long as there is a Stanley Cup, famed hockey executive Frank J. Selke will be the "ass man."Selke
was the assistant to Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Conn Smythe
when the team won the Stanley Cup in 1945 by defeating the Detroit Red
Wings in seven games.In keeping with tradition, the names of the
Leafs players, coaches and managers were engraved on the Cup, which had
been donated in 1892 by Canada's Governor-General as a trophy for the
country's best hockey team.When Lord Stanley of Preston's Cup
came back from the engraver in 1945, the position of Toronto's
assistant manager had been abbreviated. Frank Selke was set in sterling
silver as the "ass man."It is but one of the enduring curiosities of hockey's greatest treasure, the Stanley Cup."We
try and tell a lot of the players about Selke because it's kind of a
neat story," said Phil Pritchard, vice-president and curator of the
Hockey Hall of Fame.A total of 2,112 names have been hammered
into hockey's Holy Grail. Some are misspelled; one has been covered
with X's and still another can't be explained. Yet despite its
blemishes - or maybe because of them - the Stanley Cup remains this
country's most powerful talisman: a 3-foot trophy that can make hard
men weep and whole cities dance in the street.The Cup's
principal mystery concerns Ottawa-born Harry (Punch) Broadbent, whose
name appears upside down along the outer rim of the bowl.Broadbent
won the 1926 NHL championship with the Montreal Maroons after being
traded from his beloved Ottawa Senators. His name appears on the
Stanley Cup's first ring with 17 of his Montreal teammates. But
Broadbent's name also stands virtually alone on the outer bowl. The
inner bowl contains the names of 29 players from the 1907 Montreal
Wanderers - the first team to engrave its roster - and the 1915
Vancouver Millionaires. Broadbent didn't play with either team.Broadbent
won three Stanley Cups while playing for the Senators during the early
1920s, but the names of his teammates do not appear on the trophy.
(Engraving the rosters of victorious teams didn't become an annual
tradition until 1924.)"It's one of those great Stanley Cup stories: we're not sure why he's there," Pritchard said.The
Cup is also marked by a host of spelling mistakes. And no player had
his name butchered more often than Jacques Plante. The name of the
Canadiens goalie, who backstopped his team to five consecutive titles
starting in 1956, was misspelled three times as Jac Plante, Jacq
Plante, and Jaques Plante.Other Hall of Fame players also had
their names mangled. The Red Wings' Alex Delvecchio (Belvecchio) and
the Habs' Bob Gainey (Gainy) are misspelled on the trophy.Some
have two versions of their names engraved for the same Cup victory. In
1938, journeyman Pete Palangio won the Stanley Cup with the Chicago
Black Hawks. His name appears twice: once spelled correctly, and once
as Palagio. Leafs goalie Walter (Turk) Broda appears on the Cup in 1942
as both Turk Broda and Walter Broda.
Even
hockey teams themselves could be victimized by bleary-eyed
silversmiths. In 1963, the TORONTO MAPLE LEAES won the Stanley Cup; in
1972, the conquering BQSTQN BRUINS were carved onto the mug; and in
1981, the NEW YORK ILANDERS became part of Lord Stanley's lore.The
NHL requires teams to designate a maximum of 52 names to be engraved on
the Cup, a limit that has been exceeded only once: by the 1998 Detroit
Red Wings. The team squeezed 55 names onto the Cup by using a smaller
font size.In 1984 after his team won its first Cup, Edmonton
Oilers owner Peter Pocklington approved a list of 31 names, including
his father, Bazil, though he had no position with the team. The league
sent the Cup back to the engraver and ordered his name covered in a
series of X's.The NHL now corrects simple engraving errors. That
policy took hold after rugged winger Adam Deadmarsh reviewed the names
engraved to mark the 1996 championship won by his Colorado Avalanche.
His name appeared as "Adam Deadmarch." He was so upset the league fixed
the name for the sake of posterity. (The Donkey man could only be so
lucky.)The NHL relies on a Montreal silversmith, Louise St.
Jacques, to pound every name by hand into the trophy. She has been the
league's exclusive engraver for the past two decades, but she uses
different metal letters and tools than her predecessors, Pritchard
said, which makes it impractical to fix old mistakes.Every 13
years, as the Stanley Cup fills with names, the top barrel ring - there
are five rings - is removed to make room for a new one on the bottom.
(The old ring is flattened and put on display in Lord Stanley's Vault
at the Hockey Hall of Fame.)The NHL could reduce errors and save
on space by using today's computer-guided lasers to engrave the Cup
with tiny, perfect letters.But Pritchard said that technology
would not be in keeping with Cup tradition, which embraces the quirks
and flaws of human craftsmanship."The tradition of the NHL
trophies are probably the best in the world: they are true silver
trophies in every sense of the word," he said."I can't see how they'd use a computer etching on the Stanley Cup. Some things don't change." Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

That's fantastic. It should be the Frank J. "Arse Man" Selke Trophy.

Wasn't "ASS MAN" the license plate of Kramer's proctologist?

Acrobat wrote:Wasn't "ASS MAN" the license plate of Kramer's proctologist?

that it was, one of the best episodes of Seinfeld, oh who am I kidding, they were all great.

SensFan71 wrote:

Acrobat wrote:Wasn't "ASS MAN" the license plate of Kramer's proctologist?

that it was, one of the best episodes of Seinfeld, oh who am I kidding, they were all great.

Yeah. My fave is the epic: The Contest.

Ass man! Ha ha!

Jerry Fusilli!

"One in a million doc, one in a million."

I have no issue with changing tools to use laser etching. The current silversmith uses different tools than her predecessor, so how would this be different? As much as we can look back on it 40 years or so later, and laugh our asses off about "ass man", I am more on the side of Adam Deadmarch being upset at seeing his name misspelled. The tradition of making dumb mistakes (Bqston? Ilanders?) is not a tradition I see any need of continuing.

wprager wrote:I have no issue with changing tools to use laser etching. The current silversmith uses different tools than her predecessor, so how would this be different? As much as we can look back on it 40 years or so later, and laugh our asses off about "ass man", I am more on the side of Adam Deadmarch being upset at seeing his name misspelled. The tradition of making dumb mistakes (Bqston? Ilanders?) is not a tradition I see any need of continuing.

The tradition of the Stanley Cup would never be tarnished by using lasers, it still is what it is, every hockey player wants it, moreso than an Olympic gold medal. The stories will still be there from the past, but there will not be any disgruntled players that have their names mispelled, makes me wonder though how they could get Deadmarsh wrong, but not any of the russian names that have been etched on there.

SensFan71 wrote:

wprager wrote:I have no issue with changing tools to use laser etching. The current silversmith uses different tools than her predecessor, so how would this be different? As much as we can look back on it 40 years or so later, and laugh our asses off about "ass man", I am more on the side of Adam Deadmarch being upset at seeing his name misspelled. The tradition of making dumb mistakes (Bqston? Ilanders?) is not a tradition I see any need of continuing.

The tradition of the Stanley Cup would never be tarnished by using lasers, it still is what it is, every hockey player wants it, moreso than an Olympic gold medal. The stories will still be there from the past, but there will not be any disgruntled players that have their names mispelled, makes me wonder though how they could get Deadmarsh wrong, but not any of the russian names that have been etched on there.

What's wrong with Russian names? Pronouncing them may be difficult, but spelling is easy

In all seriousness, though, the guy in charge of sending the names over to the engraver *probably* would block-print the Russian names very carefully, while names likde "Deadmarch" may have been written (and read) quickly.

You don't make mistakes when you are doing something more difficult; usually you make mistakes when you are not paying attention. I always noticed that in writing software -- the defect density in really complicated code is not higher than it is in simple stuff. Why? Because you generally have a more experienced programmer writing it, and everyone pays more attention, including the code reviewers.

wprager wrote:

SensFan71 wrote:

wprager wrote:I have no issue with changing tools to use laser etching. The current silversmith uses different tools than her predecessor, so how would this be different? As much as we can look back on it 40 years or so later, and laugh our asses off about "ass man", I am more on the side of Adam Deadmarch being upset at seeing his name misspelled. The tradition of making dumb mistakes (Bqston? Ilanders?) is not a tradition I see any need of continuing.

The tradition of the Stanley Cup would never be tarnished by using lasers, it still is what it is, every hockey player wants it, moreso than an Olympic gold medal. The stories will still be there from the past, but there will not be any disgruntled players that have their names mispelled, makes me wonder though how they could get Deadmarsh wrong, but not any of the russian names that have been etched on there.

What's wrong with Russian names? Pronouncing them may be difficult, but spelling is easy

In all seriousness, though, the guy in charge of sending the names over to the engraver *probably* would block-print the Russian names very carefully, while names likde "Deadmarch" may have been written (and read) quickly.

You don't make mistakes when you are doing something more difficult; usually you make mistakes when you are not paying attention. I always noticed that in writing software -- the defect density in really complicated code is not higher than it is in simple stuff. Why? Because you generally have a more experienced programmer writing it, and everyone pays more attention, including the code reviewers.

oh nothing wrong with them, just some of them are incredibly hard to spell/say, I don't think Harry Neale every pronounced a russian name right, and that included Bure Your logic stands true though, anything more difficult, extra care is put into it, so a name like Smith would be misspelled say before Morozov or something like that.

Harry had trouble pronouncing the names of any player not wearing a maple leaf. No, strike that. He had no trouble at all, he just didn't say the names. It was "the Ottawa forward" or the "Montreal defender".

The tradition of mispronouncing names, though, goes all the way back to Gallivan and Hewitt with their massacring of Lafloor and Coor-noyer.

wprager wrote:Harry had trouble pronouncing the names of any player not wearing a maple leaf. No, strike that. He had no trouble at all, he just didn't say the names. It was "the Ottawa forward" or the "Montreal defender".

The tradition of mispronouncing names, though, goes all the way back to Gallivan and Hewitt with their massacring of Lafloor and Coor-noyer.

ah so its a hockey night in Canada tradition, well there are no other teams besides the leafs is there? let's not be silly here.

Back to the laser etching - early versions of Postscript could be programmed to introduce a degree of variability from one character to the next, even if they were the same character. You can't tell me that 20 years later, that can't be done with the laser etching machine.