Clarkson Cup
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The Clarkson Cup is an ice hockey trophy to be awarded for excellence in Canadian women's hockey. Like the Stanley Cup, it was created by and named for a Governor General of Canada, in this case, the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson.
[edit] History
With the 2004-05 NHL season cancelled because of lockout, the Stanley Cup, for the first time since the Spanish Flu pandemic, would not be awarded. Governor General Adrienne Clarkson proposed in February 2005 that, since the Stanley Cup was to be awarded to the best professional hockey team of the year, it should be awarded to the best women's hockey team, as they were still playing. However, most fans preferred the creation of a different trophy for professional women's hockey supremacy.
On September 14, 2005, Clarkson announced the creation of a new trophy for women's hockey. The Clarkson Cup is made of silver, designed by Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit. The cup portion of the trophy is not much bigger than a large coffee mug.
The trophy was awarded only once, to the Canadian national women's hockey team on July 10, 2006. It had been expected that the cup would eventually be contested as the championship of the National Women's Hockey League, the top women's league in Canada. However, the high travel costs between western Canada and eastern Canada for women's teams (which led to the Calgary Oval X-Treme and Edmonton Chimos to break away from the NWHL for two seasons — 2004–2005 and 2005–2006 — and form the Western Women's Hockey League) may preclude the trophy from being contested in a one-on-one finals series.
There are no announced plans for further competitions for the Cup.
[edit] Champions
- See also: Stanley Cup Challenge Games
| Month/Year | Winning Team | Coach | Losing Team | Playoff Format | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Team Canada | Melody Davidson, head coach | Team Sweden | Olympic tournament | 4–1 |
Canadian silversmith Beth M. Biggs was commissioned to make the Clarkson Cup. She designed and build the sterling trophy and collaborated with 3 Inuit artists, Okpik Pitseolak, Therese Ukaliannuk and Pootoogook Qiatsuk. The Inuit artists designed some of the decoration on the cup. There are images of Sedna, Arctic animals, ancient masks, and the flowers of the provinces and territories of Canada.
