The black and white sketch lives in a silver frame on the wall of Stan Neckar’s home office.
It’s a prized possession, a snapshot capturing a rite of passage for NHL-champion fathers.
There was Neckar, the former Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman, holding then-1-year-old son Ty in a jubilant dressing room after the club won the 2004 Stanley Cup. Music blared. Beers flowed. And Ty sat in the silver bowl of hockey’s holy grail, staring straight ahead at a photographer, who was ready to capture the scene before the infant wiggled out.
It was the final moment of Neckar’s 11-year NHL career, and the photo is what the Czech native is still asked about most today.
“It never goes away,” said Neckar, 50, now a youth hockey coach in Tampa. “I see this picture in different magazines. Sometimes, people in Canada will tell me, ‘Oh I saw you and Ty.’”
The youngest generation has been actively participating in Cup-celebrating photo opportunities for more than a century. Perhaps the earliest documented example shows Marcel “Stanley” Vezina, then the cherub-cheeked newborn son of legendary Canadiens goalie Georges Vezina, dangling his feet over his namesake’s rim after Montreal clinched the 1916 Cup against Seattle.
From on-ice celebrations to dressing room parties to dedicated summer days with the Cup for every victorious player, there is no shortage of opportunities for little ones to share in the legacy of Lord Stanley’s trophy. Former defenseman Jack Johnson’s three kids, for instance, were baptized in the bowl instead of a font. And it’s not just infants: Over the years, older children have eaten ice cream, pasta or cereal out of it, slept next to it, put it between their swingsets. Florida Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues’ kids got so into the fun, they dressed up like the Hockey Hall of Fame’s white-gloved Keepers of the Cup.
More babies are poised to take center stage if the Carolina Hurricanes clinch the 2026 Stanley Cup in Game 6 on Sunday night, with three Hurricanes welcoming kids in the last month alone. Same for if the Vegas Golden Knights stage a championship comeback, as five players have partners whose due dates landed during the current playoffs. For many fortunate enough to win, the most special part is sharing it with their families — and giving their offspring an iconic, bucket-list moment to look back on for the rest of their lives.
As former NHL defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk said, “It’s natural instinct when you have a tiny human to plop them in there.”
These are their stories.
Marcel “Stanley” Vezina sits in the Cup in 1916. (Via Archives de la Ville de Montréal)
Mike Rupp had just gone through one of the greatest moments of his life.
The then-Devils rookie had scored the Stanley Cup-clinching goal in the 2003 Final against the Anaheim Ducks. It was bedlam at the Continental Airlines Arena. The team partied pretty much the whole night there in the building.
So did Rupp’s nine-month-old daughter, Maddie.
“It was, omigosh, like 2 in the morning, her clothes were drenched because I was carrying her the whole time,” Rupp recalled, laughing. “I was sweating — it was gross. She was doused with champagne. I’m like, ‘Do we put her to bed or give her a bath? This is disgusting.’ But everyone was on their own planet.”
The photo of Maddie sitting on the edge of the Cup, a light pink hat on her head and a pacifier in her lap with Rupp and his then-wife Christi behind her, is framed in a few places at Rupp’s home. And Maddie, now 23, still holds it over her younger brother, Mason, 21, who has played hockey his whole life.
“That’s how she shuts him up all the time,” Rupp said. “She’s like, ‘I was in the Cup, so see ya.’”
Rupp holds his daughter Maddie in the Cup after the Devils’ clincher in 2003. (Gary Hershorn / Reuters)
The younger of Blake Coleman’s two daughters, Carson, was born during the 2021 Eastern Conference final, so she was only three weeks old when the Lightning won their second straight Cup title. After their clinching win over the Canadiens at Amalie Arena, she was nestled into the trophy’s bowl in the family lounge.
“I remember it was probably like 1 in the morning and there’s guys smoking stogies and booze flying everywhere,” Coleman said. “My brother was looking at me like, ‘Are you sure this is good parenting?”
Carson’s older sister, Charlie, took her turn the previous year, after the Lightning returned victorious from 65 days in the 2020 playoff bubble. Landing home in front of a large crowd at a private Tampa airport, Coleman deplaned and raised the Cup over his head — just as his wife, Jordan, did the same with 8-month-old Charlie, who was wearing a Lightning jersey and white headband.
“Put Charlie in the Cup!” a fan yelled.
Even on a hot day, Charlie handled the experience well.
“We were feeding her teething crackers so she wouldn’t cry,” Coleman said.
“It was a dream of mine to win the Cup and to be able to share it with your kids that way is pretty awesome.”
Photos of the Coleman girls inside the Cup, or otherwise posing with it, are all over their Dallas-area home. One of Carson marked the first time that Blake and Jordan had seen her smile. Coleman also joked that the girls each have their own box for his two pieces of championship jewelry.
“They’re like, ‘That’s my ring, right?’” Coleman said.
Kevin Shattenkirk and his Lightning teammates were riding a red and yellow trolley in downtown Tampa, en route to a COVID-friendly celebration for the 2020 Cup.
It was a hot day in late September, as the player-dads juggled their kids and the trophy. It was like a “rotating photo op,” Shattenkirk said, between him, Coleman, Ryan McDonagh, Luke Schenn and others. (The team would later stage an actual photo shoot at Amalie Arena, with all the players’ families, where at least half a dozen infants and toddlers posed inside the Cup.)
Shattenkirk’s son, Connor, then 1, wore a T-shirt and shorts while resting awkwardly in the Cup. Handed a water bottle, he tried to chug. “It was mostly that Connor needed a place to chill and drink some water,” Shattenkirk said. “He didn’t realize the enormity of it.”
That has changed. Now almost 7, Connor is always looking back at pictures from that day, Shattenkirk said, whether in the family album or on his father’s phone.
“He definitely doesn’t know the myth of not touching the Cup and all of that,” Shattenkirk said, referring to the hockey superstition that one should not lay a hand on the trophy until it is won. But, “he understands how important the Stanley Cup is and how cool a moment that is for him.”
Kingston and Weston Schenn can relate. The sons of Shattenkirk’s Tampa teammate, they were fixtures with the Cup when the Lightning won back-to-back titles. (Kingston was 3 in 2020; Weston was born during the COVID-sparked pause before the 2020 playoffs). They were more active with the Cup after the second championship in 2021, with the two eating ice cream and cereal out of it. Kingston was on Schenn’s boat during that year’s boat parade celebration. They also swung on their swingset with the Cup in between them on his Cup Day in 2021; a black and white photo of the latter now hangs above each of their beds at their Kelowna, B.C., home.
Now, the brothers feel like the Cup was theirs, too. As with Coleman, Schenn keeps his Cup rings in separate boxes at home. Each plays a highlight video from that particular Lightning season when it is opened.
“What’s hitting me now is when Kingston tries to sneak into my safe and look at the Cup rings, and it’s not me saying, ‘Hey, you want to look at these?’” Schenn said. “I’m almost telling him, ‘Don’t go in there.’ But they just want to see the video again.
“That’s from them probably seeing it firsthand.”
Connor Shattenkirk, right, and Carson Coleman took their place in the Cup after the Lightning won in 2020 and 2021, respectively. (Courtesy Blake Coleman and Kevin Shattenkirk)
When the Panthers won back-to-back Cup titles in 2024 and 2025, plenty of kids were involved. Left winger Jonah Gadjovich, for instance, experienced the birth of his twins, Lion and Adalee, just weeks before Florida clinched the former championship. Both babies fit in the Cup — together.
“I was thinking, ‘I wonder if any twins have sat in the Cup like that, and maybe they were the first ones?” Gadjovich said. “I just remember the first thing I wanted to do after winning the Cup was to get my kids in there because, I guess as a father and hockey player, it’s the dream to win the Stanley Cup, but to do it in front of my kids and to be able to share it with them and have them sit in the Cup like that — that’s going to last a lifetime.”
In fact, Gadjovich said that getting Lion and Adalee into the Cup was “priority one” for him and his wife Allison amid the Panthers’ on-ice celebration, pointing out that he’d watched it happen in previous seasons. The resulting photo of the four of them hangs prominently in their home.
“Now we have little mini replicas of the (Panthers’ two) Cups at our house,” said Gadjovich. “And both my kids point at (them) and say, “Stanley Cup! Stanley Cup! Dadda! Hockey!’”
The trophy’s lore also struck a chord with Rodrigues’ oldest son, Grayson, albeit on a much more creative level. In 2024, the family was watching videos of Florida’s celebration when talk turned to the Keepers of the Cup, including Hockey Hall of Fame vice president Philip Pritchard, and their job of traveling alongside the trophy. Grayson chimed in that he wanted to wear white gloves like the keepers to hold it on Rodrigues’ Cup day.
“But on our Cup day, the Cup was late, so instead of them bringing it to the house, we were meeting them at the airport and it was (Grayson’s) idea to go in and get the Cup from them and bring it out,” Rodrigues said. “We just kind of ran with it and we’re glad we did.”
Rodrigues’ son Grayson, front left, led the charge to dress up as a Keeper of the Cup. (Courtesy Evan Rodrigues)
To Nick Bonino, preparing for his Cup day was like planning another wedding. He celebrated the Penguins’ repeat championship in 2017 by playing golf near his offseason home in Connecticut, visiting a children’s hospital and attending a nighttime dinner and reception.
“Maybe the busiest day of my life,’ he said.
In one of Bonino’s most cherished photos from the day, taken in his backyard, then-1-year-old daughter Maisie is standing inside the Cup. By contrast, when the Penguins won in 2016 and Maisie was placed in the Cup, her parents had to hold her head up because she didn’t have the necessary neck strength yet.
There’s a photo of her standing in the Cup in 2017 in their Connecticut home, on the wall in their living room, and a bunch of other photos around his office in their St. Albert, Alberta home. Bonino has so many pictures of her by the trophy, too, that it seemed like she never left its side.
“Oftentimes, she asks, ‘Am I famous? I was in the Cup, am I famous?’” Bonino said. “I know her sister and her brother are, I wouldn’t say jealous, but the older they get — they’re 8 and 5, Maisie is 10 — they’re like, ‘Wow, you got to be in the Cup, so cool!’”
Even so, added Bonino, now a Penguins assistant coach, “it’d be really nice to win another one. And get all of them in it.”
Images of Maisie inside the Cup have become Bonino family treasures. (Courtesy Nick Bonino)
When Bill Guerin won his first Cup title, with the New Jersey Devils in 1995, he wasn’t even married. But by the time Guerin hoisted it a second time, in 2009, he had four kids, ages 8-13.
And so, hours before his teammates and their wives partied late into the night at his Cup party, Guerin organized an afternoon “Kids Cup Day.” It was held at Shipwreck Tavern in Bayville, N.Y., a pirate-themed pub. Eight-year-old son Liam invited his entire hockey team. Then-almost 12-year-old daughter Kayla carried the Cup into the restaurant. All the kids drank soda and Gatorade out of the Cup and ate a Cup-shaped cake.
For Liam, the experience was an extension of Pittsburgh’s victory celebration, when Guerin took each of his kids for a lap around the ice as the Cup was being passed around. Liam had also earned the distinction of being the first kid in the Penguins’ postgame dressing room to drink out of the chalice. The Cup still smelled like beer and champagne, but the taste of red Gatorade, poured by legends Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, was oh-so sweet.
“I almost feel like I remember every second,” said Liam Guerin, now 25. “It was unbelievable.”
Of course, as with the Schenn boys, the Guerin children were too big to fit inside the Cup. But other attendees at their dad’s party took full advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“It was a blast — hilarious,” said Bill Guerin, now general manager of the Minnesota Wild. “I get people sending me pictures that were at my 1995 Cup party, holding their baby in the Cup back then. They’re 30 years old now — it’s pretty crazy.”
Kayla Guerin drank orange Gatorade from the bowl after father Bill won with the Penguins in 2009. (Dave Sandford / NHLI via Getty Images)
Jack Johnson’s journey to his first Stanley Cup title was unique, having played more than 1,000 NHL games before finally lifting it with the Avalanche in 2022.
So it’s only fitting that his babies-in-the-Cup story is hard to top.
Johnson and his wife, Kelly, had already planned for their three kids to get baptized that summer, acknowledging they were a little tardy in doing so. In a bit of serendipity, one option Johnson was given for his Cup day happened to be the weekend of their baptism. They figured that their family would be in town anyway, so they asked Pastor Bruce Dickerson at Jerome Church in Plainville, Ohio, if they could bring the Cup.
“I can do it out of the Cup if you want,” he replied.
So, one by one, Jacklyn, Ty and Tommy took turns getting baptized. Backlit by light-blue lighting at the front of the church, Pastor Bruce pulled the holy water out of the Cup and poured it over the kids’ heads, with not-so-subtle chuckles coming from the pews after each.
“It was cool, it was funny, it was memorable,” Johnson said. “Everyone who was at church got a kick out of it. You couldn’t help but laugh.”
At the time, the kids got more out of other moments with the Cup, such as eating ice cream and fudge out of it. They also rode alongside it in a firetruck during the Avalanche’s parade, with Johnson holding his youngest, Tommy, as Jacklyn and Ty battled with squirt guns.
“I think they enjoyed the squirt guns the most,” Johnson said.
But that’ll change.
“To see them use (the Cup) as a big toy — to them, it’s probably no different than winning a mini-stick game,” Johnson said. “Someday they’ll look back on the pictures and say, ‘Man, I can’t believe we did that.”
In addition to uniquely getting baptized in the Cup, Johnson’s children continued the time-honored tradition of eating dessert out of it. (Courtesy Jack Johnson)
Many of these Stanley Cup kids will eventually have stories such as Stan Neckar’s son Ty, now a 23-year-old actor living in Malibu, Calif.
Ty grew up playing hockey in Florida, moving away at age 14 to join an AAA team in Pittsburgh and later appearing in 11 games for the Odessa Jackalopes at the junior-level North American Hockey League. But he didn’t see a big future in the sport, so he stopped at 19 and went back to another major passion: acting.
Ty took acting lessons for a couple of years in California and got a big break in a supporting role in the 2025 hockey movie, “Youngblood,” a remake of the 1986 film by the same title starring Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze, among others. Along the way, Ty recalled, he watched YouTube clips of his father’s hockey career, admiring his toughness: Stan was limited to just three total NHL games in his final season (one in the regular season and two during the Lightning’s title run) due to groin injuries.
Ty said he often glances at the photo of himself as a baby in the Cup — thumbtacked to a board above his desk-side table — and thinks, “Wow, it’s crazy.” He also watches video of the celebration. He wishes he had been older so he could remember it.
“My mom said we were drenched in champagne and beer,” Ty said.
But he has perspective on the moment. To Ty, the photo isn’t about him or the Cup. It’s about his dad finally reaching the summit of the sport he loved.
“If my dad can do that, I feel I can do a lot,” Ty said. “It’s crazy, and I think about it all the time. People chase their dreams and my dad did exactly what he wanted to do. It’s an insane feat.
“Growing up, I look at it with a new perspective. My dad is a Stanley Cup champion. I don’t know how I’ll top that.”
Now both adults, Ty and Stan Neckar continue to bond over their Stanley Cup moment. (Courtesy Stan Neckar)
