WASHINGTON -- There's only one Stanley Cup. It can't be broken apart and shared between teams like a Kit-Kat bar. Only one franchise gets to hoist it and smooch it and drink from it like the Holy Grail. Only one roster of names is engraved upon it, etched onto hockey history itself.
Because there is only one Stanley Cup, there can logically be only one Team of Destiny in the Stanley Cup Final, and our annual hobby as fans is observing the omens and miracles that indicate that destiny for one team, while cataloguing the harbingers and stigmata that would indicate the other team has been preordained by the hockey gods as the runner-up.