Washington Capitals Likely First And Last Team To Do Keg Stands On The Stanley Cup

Alex Ovechkin, captain of the Stanley Cup Champion Washington Capitals, was hoisted into the air on June 9, 2018. Whilst airborne, he did something of which others can only dream: he gulped beer from the chalice of the Stanley Cup.

He started a bit of a trend—as recently as August 26, team and staff members were still going for it—but the halcyon days of Stanley Cup keg stands seem to be coming to an end.

Before we move on, behold this glorious feat:

The Washington Post reports that Philip Pritchard, one of the Cup's stewards from the Hockey Hall of Fame, would very much appreciate it if they would knock it the hell off.

"We ask them politely not to do it," Pritchard said. "We're trying to preserve the history of the Stanley Cup. We don't want any unnecessary damage to it or a person, in case they drop the person or he presses too hard or something."

The Cup will be engraved, updated, and cleaned at the end of September, Pritchard says, "so we'll see how it is because we have to take it apart then and everything. We'll know probably more then, in early October, once it's back for the home opener. Our biggest thing is respect for it."

If it's in rough shape, it's possible that keg stands on the 126-year-old Cup could be officially banned.

It's not like there aren't already kind of nutty things that happen with the Stanley Cup. As the Post notes, since 1995, every member of the team gets to spend a day with the trophy; as such, it's been stationed at the bottom of a pool, used for a baptism, and had alcohol sipped out of it on many occasions. The most surprising thing about the Cup keg stands might actually be that they hadn't happened before.

"[Keg stands] haven't really been that popular in the hockey world, I guess," Pritchard told the Post.