Nirvana in Store for Hockey Fans

The line wound past the Hawaiian shirts, snaked through men's suits and pushed into underwear.

Turning a corner at jeans, it stretched through tools, past water purifiers, luggage, lawn mowers and barbecues. Past shoes. Past women's plus sizes!

Not until it reached women's dresses did the line that surged through the Sears store in Buena Park on Tuesday finally dwindle. More than 1,300 people waited their turn to see, touch and be photographed next to the most hallowed popcorn bowl, bait bucket and beer barrel in all of North America.

Hockey's Stanley Cup, which has been all those things and more in its 110-year history, arrived by limousine to kick off a promotional tour of Southern California with the Buena Park appearance, during which it showed why it is the most beloved and famous trophy in all of sports, or at least all of sports in the United States and Canada.

At least among hockey fans.

The occasion, of course, was the upcoming appearance of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in the Stanley Cup finals, where they will face the winner of a playoff series between the Ottawa Senators and the New Jersey Devils. Duck fans, and a few devotees of rival teams, took advantage of what many called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the revered bowl.

In fact, the Stanley Cup is hardly reclusive. It's the most populist trophy in professional sports. Every member of a winning Stanley Cup team gets a chance to keep the Cup for a day, and do with it what he wants "within reason," according to National Hockey League rules. As a result, the Cup, best known for its annual victory skate on the shoulders of the NHL's newest champions, is no stranger to bars, restaurants, strip clubs, fishing holes, churches or, apparently, department stores.

For all that, or maybe because of it, it was received Tuesday with the hushed reverence once reserved for moon rocks, or Thomas Pynchon sightings.

"It's beautiful," gushed an awestruck Bob Daum, 68. The custodial contractor from La Habra arrived at 10 a.m., six hours before the Cup, to be the first in line. "It is one of the greatest things I ever could have done in life. It will never happen to me again."

Beau Lambert, a film student from Thousand Oaks, skipped school to come see the Cup with friends, but chided them for being star-struck as they waited in line. When it was his turn to climb onto a small stage and have his picture taken with the hockey chalice, his bravado faded. "I didn't even touch it," he mused afterward. "I was too scared to touch it. I just got the hockey vibes."