One of the great traditions in hockey is that every player gets a day (or two days, or half-day, in Nathan Horton's case) to celebrate the Stanley Cup win with friends, family, and their home communities. With over a hundred days of offseason after the Cup is won, and about 50 of those days spent at various locales around the city the Cup is won for, the other days are spent traveling the world, seeing the sights. It's been atop mountains and in swimming pools; babies have been baptized in it, cereal's been eaten out of it.
But what about this year?
Our Bruins will be taking the Cup to five different countries over the next few weeks. After the jump, we'll start by guessing what happened at Nathan Horton's day with the Cup yesterday and go from there.
Nathan Horton: With the Cup arriving late to his parade, Horton will take the party to overtime and then re-enact one of his own game-winning goals. Everyone will promptly forget the shenanigans from earlier in the day and start celebrating.
David Krejci: Will throw a party in his hometown that will feature a big-screen TV that only plays his hat trick from game 6 against Tampa Bay on loop. Massive amounts of Czech food will be served. At the end of the night, there might possibly be a cup appearance at a bad Eurodance nightclub, where the shiny Cup will double as a disco ball.
Tomas Kaberle: His entire night will be spent faking a Cup raise then instead passing it off to one of his family/friends.
Tuukka Rask: Will most definitely NOT throw the Cup like a milk crate. No, he'll probably take it to some Finnish death metal festival or something, they do that a lot there. Hopefully his brother will be back from Predators development camp by that point so he can share in the victory celebration. After pouring lots of beer on the Cup in front of a crowd, Rask will probably sit and observe the party while everyone else does all the work.
Zdeno Chara: No one else in Trencin is 6'9, so sadly no one else will be able to touch the Cup at Chara's party because he'll be holding it over his head yelling the whole time. The next morning before the Cup heads off to its next destination, he'll drink the biggest protein shake ever out of it before heading back to Africa to actually finish climbing Mount Kilimanjaro this time.
Dennis Seidenberg: German beer and sausage will highlight Seids' day with the Cup. He'll bring it to a beer garden where Marco Sturm will just happen to be that day. Sadly Sturm will touch the Cup and decide to retire the next day, as his Cup hopes and dreams went the way of his knees - destroyed.
Shawn Thornton: Will take it to his favorite boxing gym in Oshawa while he trains. There might be a parade after that, but Oshawa (aka the dirty 'shwa) is kind of gross so probably not. Will finish the night by eating a helping of his wife's excellent cooking out of it.
Daniel Paille: Residents of Welland will be shocked to discover he's still been in the NHL all this time. They'll promptly throw him a pretty sweet parade which will be party-crashed by Welland's own BizNasty, who will decide to take Paille under his wing for the summer. Paille will come back to Boston in the fall with a mess of bad tattoos that he doesn't remember getting along with a headache that he's been nursing every morning for two months.
Rich Peverley: Will invite all his old ECHL teammates to celebrate his Cup win. (hint: you've probably never heard of any of them). Might also trot across the St. Lawrence to visit his Alma Mater, St. Lawrence University, pride of the EZAC ECAC. Will start reminiscing about the fact that when the Bruins began their Cup run, he still played for a team that doesn't exist anymore.
Chris Kelly: No one will come to his party except his family; they'll sit around drinking beer out of it. Kelly will hold his face cage the entire time; he'll spend the entire summer being haunted by whether or not to go back to wearing it, since his scoring touch seemed to be tied directly to that collegey-looking thing.
Gregory Campbell: Yes, his dad will be there, but since he loves his kid he'll try to stay out of the way as much as possible. He won't be allowed to be in the parade even though the rest of his family will; he'll make noise about it being a "situation where he has vested personal interest, he has to be professional." Campbell Jr. will be far too drunk to care about what his dad is going on about, luckily.
Tyler Seguin: Will throw the biggest party Brampton has ever seen. Will definitely be drunk the entire time. Expect Brad Marchand to make a cameo, as their bro love probably transcends provincial boundaries.
Tim Thomas: He'll return home to Flint, Michigan only to find that the town has erected a statue in his honor, made from old rusted melted-down car parts. The city will be in a state of rejoicing since building that statue and all the little replica statues that they made at the same time to sell will boost the economy so much. Thomas will commission the local Burger King to make him a cup-sized cheeseburger, since he's "more of a Whopper guy"; the cheeseburger will then be split and consumed by Thomas and his family. America.
Milan Lucic: This one is obvious. Lucic will take the Cup to GM Place and just sit on the steps all day, daring Canucks fans to come at him. Afraid of being painted with the rioting brush again, though, they'll instead just walk around like George Michael after getting broken up with by his girlfriend. After taking the Stanley Cup to Stanley Park, he'll end the day with a shirts-optional drinking party.
Johnny Boychuk: Ain't no party like an Edmonton party. I'm not sure if that's actually true, but his celebration will be full of Amstel Light, that's for certain. One other thing's for sure: he will own-goal at least once while playing road hockey with his friends during his Cup party.
Andrew Ference: Two words: recycling initiative. He'll lure all the people from his town to his Cup party and spend the entire time lecturing them on sustainable development. Afterwards, he'll fill the Cup with apple juice and cheer on his two kids, encouraging them to chug it as fast as they can.
Mark Recchi: Will sanitize the inside of the Cup thoroughly before pouring an expensive vintage into it, which will take a few hours to enjoy properly. He'll then take the Cup outside where they will nap together in a hammock. No party in Kamloops; just napping. Recchi is old, ok, he doesn't have any more time to waste on you kids and your crazy drinking parties.
Patrice Bergeron: Quebec City will do for him what Boston did for Ray Bourque, except we still had a team in 2001 so it was more embarrassing. They'll celebrate their son's Stanley Cup, wishing fervently for their own. After, while Bergeron goes home to drink beer (probably Fin du Monde, quite delicious) out of the Cup with his friends, the denizens of QC will commence the planning for their next invasion of the Prudential Center.
Adam McQuaid: Will start the day off by tripping over the cup and hitting his head on a desk. But while last time this happened he was out 7-8 weeks with a concussion, this time his mullet will cushion the blow and he'll be fine. He'll take this as a sign that the mullet needs to become a mainstay, and next season he'll even try to grow it super-long and disgusting like Jagr's in the 90s. Every time they play the Flyers, Jagr himself will be jealous. McQuaid will end his day with the Cup on one of PEI's lovely red-sand beaches.
Michael Ryder: In and around trying to figure out how to pack for Dallas ("What do you mean I won't need to dress like I live in the tundra anymore?") he'll take the Cup on a deep-sea fishing expedition, where it will almost fall overboard, much to the chagrin of seasick Cup Keeper Mike Bolt. Later, Ryder will play goalie quite successfully in a game of road hockey with all the kids at his Cup party.
Brad Marchand: There is a reason this guy is getting the Cup last; the Keepers probably figure they're going to need to repair all the damage to it after the party's done. After eating cereal out of it for breakfast (and washing that cereal down with a nice cold beer), Marchand will keep the Cup in the pool pretty much all day at his party, a la former teammate Kris Letang at the Penguins' infamous bash at Lemieux's house two years ago. Much like Lucic's party, shirts will be banned at Marchand's and much like at Seguin's party, Marchand and Seguin will be bro-ing it up the entire time. Sidney Crosby will make a sneaky cameo to congratulate fellow Nova Scotian Marchand, which he will most definitely not remember the next day.