In every sport, it is considered unlucky to talk about an outcome before it happens. In baseball if a pitcher is in route to a perfect game or no-hitter the rule is so heavily enforced it’s become tradition for his teammates to not even talk to him between innings. In high stakes tournament poker, it’s considered bad form and unlucky to congratulate the winner of the hand if there is any chance, no matter how slim, for the underdog to come back. There are a couple of instances in tournaments and final games of the series where the engravers have put the wrong team on the award before the game is over and that’s the worst jinx at all.
Ask any team up 3-0 in a series about talking like the series is over before the fourth game has been won it’s bad luck. This year the Philadelphia Flyers overcame the near impossible 3-0 deficit and almost rode that comeback win to a Stanley Cup championship. Instead, the Flyers finished runner -up, but won the Eastern Conference and the Prince of Wales trophy in the process. Problem is there is a Prince of Wales trophy out there engraved with a team other than the Flyers. The team on that trophy? The Washington Capitals.
The Capitals finished the season with the best record in the National Hockey League with 121 points. The San Jose Sharks had the next best record, and the best record in the West with 113 points. The Capitals entered the playoffs, with good reason, as one of the favorites to win the Stanley Cup and to win the Prince of Wales trophy to get there.
After the Montreal Canadiens pulled off a monumental 8 seed over a 1 seed upset in the first round the Capitals weren’t even in the discussion. So how did they end up inscribed on the Prince of Wales trophy? Nobody knows for sure. There is speculation the league might have messed up and instead of etching the Capitals name into the President’s Trophy (awarded for the league’s top regular season point total) they put the Capitals name on the Prince of Wales trophy.
Simple mistake right? Yes, but oddly the Hockey Hall of Fame and went into full on cover-up mode. The powers that be were alerted to the era and simply denied, denied, denied. Brendan Milhouser, a Chicago Blackhawks fan, went to the team’s annual convention and immediately noticed the mistake on the Prince of Wales trophy. Not believing his eyes, and finding it hard to believe nobody else had caught the mistake Milhouser immediately took a photo of the mistake and tweeted it.
When questioned about it the Hockey Hall of Fame responded “the Prince of Wales Trophy hasn’t been engraved yet. I can guarantee you those photos have been doctored.” Now, Milhouser was on the defensive and wanted to preserve his good name, so he went on the attack. Media sources dismissed him as a quack and accepted the Hall of Fame at their word.
Since then the photos have been proven to be real and the Hall of Fame backtracked a little bit. They said the spokesman who issued the statement thought the question was in regard to another version of the Prince of Wales trophy. Apparently, the is always a version of the trophy at the Hockey Hall of Fame and another that travels to events like the Blackhawks convention.
The trophy at the Hockey Hall of Fame indeed had yet to be inscribed, but they fessed up and admitted to a mistake on the engraving of the traveling version. Wonder if Milhouser will ever get an apology from the media outlets that dismissed him as a distorted of truth. One question still remains and nobody’s asking it. When did they engrave the Capitals name on it? Was it right before the playoffs after the Caps wrapped up the best record in the league? Talk about bad luck. If so, maybe the shock upset against the Candians wasn’t that shocking after all.
