

CTV Kitchener





Ask any hockey fan if Kanye West and Oprah Winfrey helped the Edmonton Oilers win the Stanley Cup in 2003, and you’ll likely be met with a blank stare.

That’s not just because the entertainment world icons aren’t hockey players – it’s also because the Oilers haven’t won the NHL’s top prize since 1990.

But if you look closely at the Stanley Cup mock-up in the Wayne Gretzky statue unveiled earlier this fall in his hometown as Brantford, you’ll see not only a fictitious championship for Edmonton, but also Kanye and Oprah’s names listed among the Oilers.

It’s far from the only oddity on the statue – the same 2002-03 Oilers squad allegedly contained legendary poet Robert Frost and fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, while the listed winners of most Stanley Cups bear little resemblance to who actually took home the trophy that year.

The Great One himself isn’t immune to the statue’s peculiarities, as his name (misspelled as ‘Gretszky’) appears under the banner of the 1998-99 Detroit Red Wings – a team that didn’t win the trophy in 1999 and never employed Gretzky – alongside such names as ‘Ned Peaches’ and ‘Jim Haiti’.

It took more than a month for anyone to notice the names written on the Cup – possibly because it is several feet off the ground and engraved in small letters.

A 12-year-old boy seeing the statue for the first time made the discovery last weekend.

Randy Connely was in the same group looking at the statue.

“As soon as I saw that, I was ashamed that all that stuff was on there,” he tells CTV News.

“I’m not a huge hockey fan, but I’m from Brantford and I’m proud to be from Brantford. I thought we were doing something good by putting the statue in, but it turns out that we’re once again a laughingstock.”

Connely says the statue should be taken down until a Stanley Cup with either the correct names or no names at all can be brought in as a replacement.

Other Brantford residents say they don’t have any issue with something that’s clearly not a focal point of the statue.

“I don’t think it needs to be changed,” says Shawn Rogers.

“The focal point of this whole statue here is about Wayne and the Stanley Cup, and not necessarily about the names that are on the Stanley Cup.”

The statue previously made headlines in October, when – just days after its unveiling outside the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre – it was spray-painted by vandals.