Phil Pritchard and Craig Campbell, with their white gloves, crested blazers, Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe Trophy, boarded an NHL charter in Edmonton on Saturday and departed for Fort Lauderdale, Florida at 9 a.m. local time.
By the time of the scheduled noon touchdown for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, TVAS, CBC) at Amerant Bank Arena on Monday between the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers, hockey’s most coveted trophy will have traveled nearly 12,000 miles during the Finals — about 20,000 kilometers according to the metric system.
This marks the first time the trophy has crossed the border between Canada and the United States five times in a series since 2011, when the champion Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks went to the limit of seven games.
“It’s been an amazing series,” Pritchard said with a laugh less than an hour before departing Edmonton, as he watched the trophies go through security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Pritchard is the Hockey Hall of Fame’s curator. He’s also the shrine’s vice president of resource center and archives, but to hockey fans he’s the “Keeper of the Cup,” the Stanley Cup’s foremost historian, travel agent, tour guide, silver polisher and bodyguard.
