Stanley Cup, McCrimmon draw huge crowd

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This article was published 21/07/2023 (1040 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The last time the Stanley Cup visited Brandon, Lennon Paradis fit in the top with room to spare.

That’s certainly not the case anymore. The four-year-old posed near the Stanley Cup with her father Martin and 12-year-old brother Ashton on Friday morning in the Manitoba Room of the Keystone Centre as Vegas Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon brought the trophy back to the Wheat City.

The Boissevain trio arrived around 9 a.m., and saw the Cup just after 11 o’clock in its first trip to Brandon since former St. Louis Blues defenceman Joel Edmundson brought it home in 2019.

“St. Louis had just won their first Cup,” Martin Paradis said. “I’m a diehard St. Louis fan and we asked Joel if I could put her up in the Cup and we did and got that picture. It’s pretty awesome.”

A long lineup began forming by 5:30 a.m., snaking through the Manitoba Room and out the side doors and around part of the Keystone Centre. The doors opened around 9.

While it was a long wait, Ashton said it was worth it.

“I was pretty happy,” Ashton Paradis said of his moment with the trophy. “It was touching the Oilers (on the Cup), because that’s my favourite team. Their name is on the Cup.”

The Golden Knights won the trophy, which was first awarded in 1893, with a 9-3 victory over the Florida Panthers in Game 5 on June 13.

It was a transcendent moment for McCrimmon, whose name now appears on the Stanley Cup with that of his late brother Brad, who won it in 1989 with the Calgary Flames.

“Brad brings a lump to my throat every time I talk about him, almost,” McCrimmon said later in the evening. “These accomplishments are emotional and one of the things I said right after on the ice was ‘You maybe think you know what it’s going to feel like when you win the Stanley Cup but you have no idea.’

“When you get out there, the emotion that goes through you and you see the absolute joy on people’s faces, it’s really, really unbelievable how that goes through your body.”

After playing with Brandon for two years in the late 1970s, McCrimmon spent 27 seasons with the Wheat Kings, joining the club for the 1988-89 campaign as assistant general manager. A season later he was already serving as head coach and general manager, a dual role he held for 13 seasons.

In 1992, he purchased one-third of the team from owner Bob Cornell and bought the rest of the club during the 2000-01 season.

After winning the Western Hockey League championship with the Wheat Kings in May 2016, he announced on Aug. 2, 2016, that he was stepping away to join the Golden Knights as their assistant general manager.

On May 2, 2019, the Golden Knights promoted him to general manager, and after the pandemic struck, McCrimmon decided the Wheat Kings needed more hands-on attention and sold the team to Jared Jacobson and the J&G Group of Companies in a deal announced on Sept. 8, 2020.

While the team no longer belongs to him, his connection with the fans does and he was happy to share the Stanley Cup with them. That was apparent in the number of Wheat Kings jerseys in the crowd.

“That’s why we wanted to do it,” McCrimmon said, whose wife Terry, daughter Chelsea and son Micky were all on hand Friday. “That’s a big part of why we chose to do Brandon and that’s a big part of why we chose to do it at the Keystone. Seeing the Keystone maintenance people, many of those people I worked with in the same building for years and years.

“That was important to Terry and I, and there were lots of familiar faces, Wheat Kings fans who were fans when we ran the team. That was really nice to see and kind of validated the reason we were doing it.”

Not surprisingly, the event also featured a reunion of the tight-knit Wheat Kings staff who worked for the team prior to the sale.

Danna Rudniski, Rick Dillabough and Chelsea and Terry McCrimmon were involved, along with Chris Falko, who still works for the club.

Rudniski took the lead role in organizing the celebration, reaching out to McCrimmon after Game 5 because she knew he would be busy with other things.

“Everybody dreams about the Stanley Cup, that it would be cool to see it someday,” Rudniski said. “The Cup plus Kelly makes it that much more special. I said to Kelly that there were going to be people who don’t even want to get their picture with the Cup. They just want to see you. Obviously, that’s true based on the lineup for his autograph and to get a picture.

“It’s been amazing, and I think everybody is just so proud of him trickling over from the Wheat Kings and now with him having such success with the Knights. Everybody is just so happy for him and happy for Brandon.”

Dillabough served as McCrimmon’s right-hand man with the Wheat Kings for decades and was pleased to see Rudniski put the day together.

“I think it speaks volumes about what he meant to the community and what he continues to mean to the community,” said Dillabough, who noted the event is also in the building where McCrimmon spent so much time over the years. “It was great to see him bring the Cup back to the Keystone Centre.”

They weren’t the only organizers on hand.

Mario Della-Savia is among the rotating group of four Hockey Hall of Fame staff in Toronto who travel with the Stanley Cup all summer.

He said there is always a great turnout for public events with the Cup in smaller communities, estimating between 2,000 and 2,500 people were on hand on Friday.

The appeal is simple.

“It’s the greatest trophy in the world,” Della-Savia said. “People are excited to see it. People love to see their favourite player on the Cup.”

In a new wrinkle this summer, the 52 Vegas names have already been added, a job usually tackled by a silversmith in Montreal in late September.

It was one more thing to see when the people who patiently stood in line finally reached the Stanley Cup.

They often took a quick picture and then handed their phone to Rudniski or Dillabough, who would snap a shot of them posing with the trophy.

“It’s just pure excitement, pure joy,” Rudniski said. “This one man hugged me. He was like ‘I’m just so excited!’ and I was like ‘That’s amazing!’

“Like I’ve been saying, I’m telling people to smile and I’m also the one with the hugest smile on my face behind the camera too. It’s just so awesome. This is such a feel-good day. It’s nice to celebrate something and get everybody together who wants to be a part of it.”

After that, they entered a second line, with McCrimmon sitting at a table signing autographs and taking pictures with people.

The celebration is something Della-Savia has seen in communities around the world. While he’s quick to say he’s not living the same day over and over again like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, there are certain similarities in the events held every summer.

What keeps it fresh is seeing what the trophy means to people.

“This is the only Stanley Cup,” Della-Savia said. “With other leagues, there are more. You get a new one every year. It’s the excitement of the fans and the excitement of the player when they bring it to their hometown. When they do that, they don’t realize the impact they make when they come back to their community as the hero.”

That was certainly the case on Friday.

While Martin Paradis remains a Blues fan, the former Wheat Kings season ticket holder was certainly pulling for McCrimmon and the Golden Knights in the final.

“I was kind of hoping he would win the Stanley Cup because I knew he would be bringing it back here,” Paradis said. “It’s pretty awesome.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson