TORONTO, Aug 24 (Reuters) - The National Hockey League should forget about any idea to expand into Europe, the head of the International Ice Hockey Federation said on Tuesday at the World Hockey Summit.
 
Speaking to a gathering of some of ice hockey's top brass, IIHF president Rene Fasel blasted the idea of the NHL setting up operations in Europe and told the league to stay away and that he would never allow it to happen.
 
"Try to come, good luck," Fasel said during a question and answer session at the four-day summit in Toronto. "This is our territory and I will fight like hell to not allow anybody to come from abroad."
 
The NHL has long flirted with the idea of one day adding a European division to the league, with NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly calling it a dream that could become reality within the next 10 years.
 
But while the NHL has repeatedly stated the stability of its 30 teams is its main priority, the league has been working hard at growing its European presence.
 
This year a record six NHL teams will open the season with a pair of games each in Europe, bringing games to Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden and Prague, Czech Republic.
 
Fasel said culture differences between North America and Europe were a big reason why the National Football League's European League is now defunct.
 
He also said if the National Basketball Association thought expanding into Europe would be successful then the league would have tried it by now.
 
"There are 500 million people in the European community, different languages, different cultures, different view of sport. It's different," said Fasel. "Let us do the job in Europe and in the end let us come together. Keep our identity in Europe, you keep your identity here."
 
Europe is becoming the new battleground for ice hockey with the IIHF eager to create a Champions League style competition that soccer has developed with massive success.
 
Russia's Kontinental Hockey League and the NHL are also looking for a piece of the European pie, including players and fans.
 
Fasel, who is also a member of the International Olympic Committee executive board, said his dream is for a "European league where we have five, six teams from Sweden and the KHL together with the Finns, the Germans, the Swiss and then try to have a European champion and then having the European champion play the Stanley Cup winner. "That would be music for the hockey fans."
(Editing by Frank Pingue)
 

TORONTO, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Though it is the National Hockey League's (NHL) ultimate prize, the Stanley Cup has been left at the bottom of a swimming pool, used as a flower pot and a popcorn bucket and carried into a Finnish sauna.  
   As the NHL allows members of every winning team their own day with the Cup, the well-travelled sterling silver trophy is often the centrepiece of unusual celebrations as players try to trump each other in creativity.  
   "If the Stanley Cup could talk it would be a best seller," Phil Pritchard, curator of the Toronto-based Hockey Hall of Fame, told Reuters during a recent interview.  
   "It would have so many viewpoints on all the great and different things that it has seen, but most of all it would be impressed on how much it travels and how many countries it has visited."  
   The 35-lb (15.89-kg), three-foot (0.9-metre) Stanley Cup is composed of a bowl, three tiered bands, a collar and five rings inscribed with the 2,163 names of members of winning teams.  
   While other North American professional sports leagues give out a new likeness of their championship trophy each year, the same Stanley Cup is handed to the NHL team that secures 16 wins in a tough, four-round playoff after an 82-game regular season.  
   When the Cup is won, the captain of the winning team is allowed to keep it for the night unsupervised -- the only time this is allowed -- which has no doubt contributed to the dents and scratches that add to the trophy's character.  
     
   CHAMPAGNE FLUTE  
   The morning after Mario Lemieux won his first Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1991, the Hall of Famer woke up to find the trophy resting at the bottom of his pool after it had served as a giant champagne flute the night before.  
   Despite years of partying and about 300 days of travel a year, the Stanley Cup has always returned safe and little worse for wear thanks to the white-glove service from Pritchard.  
   Pritchard and four others known as 'Keepers of the Cup' offer 24-hour supervision for a trophy that has been hoisted, cradled and kissed by the game's greatest players.  
   Since it was first presented in 1893, the Stanley Cup has been dropkicked into the bottom of a canal in 1905, where it remained until the next day, used as a flower pot for a few months in 1907 and left on a roadside snowbank in 1924.  
   Pritchard says at least one horse has eaten from the bowl  as have two dogs, most recently in 2007 when goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere allowed his pet to have a go.  
   Former Colorado Avalanche defenseman Sylvain Lefebvre used it as a baptismal font for his daughter in 1996, Martin Brodeur took it to a cinema so his children could eat popcorn from it and Jere Lehtinen took it to a Finnish sauna party after winning with Dallas in 1999.  
   The 117-year-old Cup has also been used as a bowl for ice cream, cereal and soup made from cows' intestines and to hold greasy chicken wings as Patrick Kane celebrated his win with the Chicago Blackhawks earlier this year.  
  Of all his time with the Stanley Cup, Pritchard said his oddest encounter was at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada when a woman mistook the trophy for a coffee urn and asked him where the coffee cups were.
     
   SILVER BOWL  
   Pritchard said winners of the Stanley Cup respected it and he could not recall the last time he had to decline an idea for how someone wanted to spend their day with it.  
   Lord Stanley of Preston, at the time the Governor General of Canada, donated the Stanley Cup in 1893 after purchasing it for 10 guineas, or $50 at that time.  
   It was originally known as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and awarded to the amateur ice hockey champions of Canada. Now insured for $1.5 million, the Stanley Cup has been competed for by NHL teams since the 1926-27 season.  
   The oldest trophy for professional athletes in North America began as a simple silver bowl with an ebony base but grew larger over the years to accommodate the names of the winners. Eventually, though, everyone's time on the trophy runs out.  
   The championship teams from the 1940-41 season to 1952-53 had their ring on the trophy removed a few years ago and put in the Hockey Hall of Fame to make room for a new ring.  
   "It's a pretty special trophy and it sends a chill up the spine every time, especially when you walk out on that red carpet after the Stanley Cup has been won," said Pritchard, who recently went up the Eiffel Tower in Paris with the cup.  
   "Travelling with the Stanley Cup, it can't get old," said Pritchard. "We are very fortunate, the guys that travel with it, to get to do that; we realise that every day."