The Chicago Tribune's Rex W. Huppke took, let's say an "academic" approach to grounding the Stanley Cup as the most-revered trophy in professional sports and perhaps "sport," period, speaking with Cup-keeper Phil Pritchard, an author, a professor of classical literature and the director of a museum about the Cup's significance in terms of modern-day sports, culture, and its lack of an analogue in Greek and Roman athletics (seriously). It's still worth a read:

"Everyone who picks up a stick and puts on skates one day wants to place the Stanley Cup over their head," said Philip Pritchard, curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. "It's a lot bigger than the game itself. It's an icon of the sport. It's the pinnacle of everything they do."

This isn't the case in America's three other major sports: football, baseball and basketball. (No offense, soccer.)

"It's easy to say if you're a hockey player that I want to win the Stanley Cup, but you don't hear many football players say they want to win the Lombardi Trophy," said Richard Davies, author of "Sports in American Life: A History." "'I want to win the Super Bowl' is what you hear them say. Or, 'I want to win a ring.'"

Continued