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BOSTON — Early last August, Bruins tough-guy and amateur antiquary, Shawn Thornton, was filmed with Hockey’s Holy Grail for a segment of Antiques Roadshow.
Thornton and several cousins travelled with the hardware to Stamford, Connecticut for the taping, where he awaited an appraiser’s estimate of his “big-shiny-metal-bowl.”
Thornton, in anticipation of the Stanley Cup’s market value had envisioned a better life for himself, one filled with “fancy chocolate truffles and shit.” A life where he wouldn’t have to scrap for scraps, namely the $825,000 he gets paid a year.
With Thornton’s family members not knowing what to do with their body parts and hovering nervously in the background, the appraiser carefully examined the trophy. Anxiety washed over the Boston enforcer.
Like all Roadshow guests he was compelled to spout a“believable” tale of how the cup had been passed down in his family for generations, starting from when Lord Stanley himself presented it to Thornton’s great great grandfather, Tobias, after he was recruited to dust-up Stanley’s ex-business associate. The appraiser saw right through it once he read the description on the bottom of the trophy: Replica, trademark Hockey Hall Of Fame, 1993.
