“Wait, Did You Say They Threw a What on the Ice?”

An explanation of a few strange NHL fan and player tradition. 

Image c/o FRED CHARTRAND,AP PHOTO/THE CANADIAN PRESS

By Val Hill 
Sport Editor

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As part of almost all sports teams, there tend to be some little superstitions and rules that they follow because of tradition. Each team within that particular sport is different and each player takes their own unique approach to these superstitions. For example, sometimes in volleyball girls won’t wash their game day knee pads to keep the “winning vibes” in the knee pads and to help them win. However, there isn’t a sport more iconic for their strange and unusual traditions than hockey, and more specifically the NHL. 

For most people the appeal of touching a shiny 2 ’11 tall trophy can be just too great, but for hockey players it is a seasonal death sentence to touch the Stanley Cup before you have secured your win. Only after a team has won the Cup, will they spend a day with it. More specifically each player will have the opportunity to spend an entire day with the Cup. Using it as a baptismal font for their kids or as a nice bowl for pasta or your beer, are all examples of things winners have done with their day with the Stanley Cup.

The NHL has a plethora of animal and sea life mascots like the San Jose Sharks, Pittsburgh Penguins, Florida Panthers, and so on. So fans have been known to throw snakes, rats, catfish, and sometimes a leopard shark onto the ice. None of these are more iconic than back in 1952 when two brothers Pete and Jerry Cuismano decided that they would throw an octopus onto the ice. After the Detroit Red Wings qualified for the playoffs, apparently the eight tentacles represented the eight wins that are needed to qualify. From then on the octopus has become a lucky symbol for the Red Wings and fans will still launch them onto the ice from time to time. 

In most sports, even in high contact sports like football or basketball, you aren’t allowed to fight each other. However, this rule goes out the window as the gloves come off for hockey players. Refs will let players duke it out once the gloves get tossed and sometimes once the helmets are off too. On less than rare occasions the fight can turn into more of a team brawl rather than a one on one. The refs do stay close to the players' fight and won't break it up until one or both are flat on the ice. However, these fights can be small little scrapes or a serious beat down with guys walking away with missing teeth and cracked bones. Despite the blood and gore, this adds to the appeal of hockey. Since who doesn’t like watching two men just swing away like it's Sunday brunch?

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