The Stanley Cup is a championship trophy awarded yearly to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoffs will continue up to next month. It is North America’s oldest professional sports trophy, being first presented in 1893.
This year the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs in the National Hockey League will finish at the end of June. The playoffs began on May 2, 2022, and are expected to end no later than June 30, 2022, with the 2022 Stanley Cup Finals, to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup.
The 16 teams are participating in this tournament in the USA and Canada.
The trophy is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, who donated it as an award to Canada’s top-ranking amateur ice hockey club. The first Cup was awarded in 1893 to the Montreal Hockey Club.
The Stanley Cup winners from the first in 1893 until 1914 were determined by challenge games and league play. In 1915, the professional ice hockey organizations National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) reached an agreement in which their respective champions would face each other annually for the Stanley Cup. It remained this way until 1926 when the trophy became the official NHL championship prize.