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Stanley Cup Could Use Spell Check
By Mat Probasco
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Posted May 21, 09 7:50 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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As hulking as NHL players may seem on ice, they can be even more daunting to etch in silver, reports the Wall Street Journal in a look at the quirky typos that decorate hockey's storied Stanley Cup. An influx of Eastern European and Scandinavian players has the league's official silversmith quaking, hoping not to become an unfortunate part of hockey lore while engraving names such as Ruslan Fedotenko, Dustin Byfuglien, or Niklas Hjalmarsson.
"With the Russians' names, you have to double-check and re-check again," says the Cup's exclusive silversmith since 1989. "Sometimes you go, 'Oh, is that how it's spelled?' " Each year she painstakingly hammers 52 names by hand (laser engraving might save the goofs, but the League won't forsake tradition) onto the Stanley Cup, but she and her predecessors haven't always had perfect results. "Boston" was spelled "Bqstqn." "Leafs" became "Leaes." And "Islanders" ended up as "Ilanders."