Stanley's Cup
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| South Park episode | |
| "Stanley's Cup" | |
 Pee wee Stan aims for the puck. |
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| Episode no. | 153 |
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| Airdate | November 15, 2006 |
| South Park - Season 10 March 22, 2006 – November 15, 2006 |
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| ← Season 9 | Season 11 → |
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| List of all South Park episodes | |
"Stanley's Cup" is episode 1014 (#153) of Comedy Central's South Park. It originally aired on November 15, 2006. This is the 10th season finale of South Park. The episode name is a play on the name of the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy of the National Hockey League (NHL), and features Stan Marsh.
[edit] Plot
Stan's bike is towed for parking tickets, which is a problem, since he needs the bike for his newspaper route (which is how he earns money). He is given an opportunity to get his bike back, but to do so he must do community service by coaching the Park County Pee-Wee hockey team. He quickly runs into a whole host of problems — one of the kids has cancer and the team from Adams County are all woefully inadequate as players. His father becomes shocked that Stan would take such a job, and thinks that he is trying to "make up" for what happened when Stan was four, when he missed a shot that resulted in a tie for the big game. (Stan can't even remember the event.)
Nelson, the boy with cancer, takes a turn for the worse, and asks Stan to win a game for him. However, his team isn't very good — though neither is the Adams County team (despite Adams team having far better discipline) — and the team ties, 0-0, following a montage played to the tune of Song 2 by Blur. This makes Nelson's cancer "not better, but not worse, sort of putting him into a cancer limbo." The team is then invited to play against Denver County, which is a very good team, at the Pepsi Center, with the same basic premise — the idea being that if Stan wins, Nelson will have enough hope to survive. Thinking about all the various movies, the team decides to believe in themselves and get a good player — and recruit Ike, based solely on the fact that he's Canadian (which actually does result in him being a better player than the others). Stan's father confronts Stan about playing at the Pepsi Center — the same place where Stan didn't win his game years ago, while he still can't remember it — and while he initially says he won't be there to watch Stan "destroy himself", he then decides (without any actual prompting from Stan) to go anyway.
When they get to the Pepsi Center to play in the intermission of a professional game, the other team doesn't show up, and Stan worries that since they can't play, it could result in Nelson's death — but the Colorado Avalanche let the Pee-wee team play the final period of their game against the Detroit Red Wings because they went through a lot of "emotional changes". The period starts with the score tied 2-2, and the game ends with the Red Wings winning 32-2 and the South Park team bloody and incapacitated. A member of Stan's team, who is bleeding from the mouth, tells Stan "I hate you coach" before the Red Wings lift the trophy to the song "We Are the Champions."
The episode concludes with Nelson whispering "No hope... no... hope..." as his heart stops beating.
[edit] Trivia
- Two references to the death of Steve Irwin are made in response to the controversies started over Irwin's "cameo" in "Hell on Earth 2006". The first is the doctor telling Stan that Nelson is "gonna die faster than Steve Irwin in a tank full of stingrays." The other one occurs when Stan's team expresses skepticism over how long Nelson was going to live. When Stan assures them that they will not be killed by the other team in the game, one of them responds, "But that's what Steve Irwin said about the stingrays."
- The episode heavily parodies The Mighty Ducks.
- The songs "Song 2" by Blur and "We Are the Champions" by Queen are used in this episode.
- The audio clip when the Pepsi Center is shown as the Pee-Wees come to play their game is the "battle won" theme from Heroes of Might and Magic III.
- Stan has a poster of The "Street" Warrior in his room, even though he doesn't like Mel Gibson.
- The outfits that Stan and Adams County Team's coach wear, as well as the hair styles, are reminiscent of the outfits of the "Miracle on Ice" coaches Herb Brooks and Viktor Tikhonov at the time of the 1980 Winter Olympics.
- Stan's paper route boss's second name, Jarvis, was also used in the previous episode as a "Jarvis Probe" and in multiple other season 10 episodes.
| Preceded by "Go God Go XII" |
South Park episodes | Followed by "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" |
