THUNDER BAY – Nearly 27 years ago, Everton Blackwin scored a Game 7, triple-overtime winner that landed the Thunder Bay Thunder Hawks the inaugural Colonial Cup.
What happened next is the stuff of legend.
The rag-tag team, which would go on to win Colonial League titles in 1994 and 1995 under the Thunder Bay Senators banner, took the trophy and started to celebrate.
And celebrate they did, dragging the spoils of their victory with them from bar to bar to bar. Along the way, the first-year trophy was dropped, dented, bitten and may have come off its wooden base. In any case, when all was said and done, team ownership looked at what remained and decided they couldn’t give it back to lthe league.
So they bought another trophy – which now resides at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto – and the original wound up in the garage of team official Andy Morrow, collecting dust for more than a quarter of a century.
When Morrow died in November, locallty owned Junk Away was called in to clean out his house, and the trophy was found and eventually donated to the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame by Dan Cheal, Junk Away's owner. A few phone calls later and it became pretty clear they had been given the original Colonial Cup.
Tom Warden was a member of that 1992 Thunder Hawks team, and on Tuesday his gaze fell upon the battered relic for the first time since the championship celebration ended.
It brought back a flood of memories for Warden, who was suspended for Game 7 and was on the ice in a suit after Blackwin – only playing because Warden was not in the lineup – completed his improbable hat trick heroics that night.
“It’s just cool. What I remember are the guys I played with. Immediately you go back to the memories ... and the challenges and that championship game and those playoffs,” said Warden, who initially planned to stay in the city for two months, but never left, and is now the athletic director at Lakehead University.
“It was from a personal note, where I just fell in love with this community and what hockey meant to this community.”
More than that, it also brings back a memory of good times, Warden said, joking he’s not sure anyone should be blamed for what happened to the original Colonial Cup.
“It’s more of a situation,” he said. “We were very happy about winning. There were a lot of very happy hockey players when we won that. We won in triple overtime in Game 7, so I know it travelled with us through our festivities and there were times when perhaps it was dropped or something else happened to it.
“I know the story is that at the end of a few days it became evident that there was an issue with the trophy. It was no longer going to be utilized as the official Colonial Cup Trophy. I just remember Andy Morrow, God rest his soul, how mad he was that we were going to have to buy a new trophy for the league.”
Bill McDonald, who coached the Thunder Hawks, said he always knew the trophy was out there somewhere.
He’s just not sure what happened in between.
“We won, and we got the cup and I gave it to (Warden) and his friends and they took it to celebrate and this is the condition it’s in now,” McDonald said, barely able to contain his laughter as he uttered the words.
“I knew we had an episode with it and it’s not like it’s uncommon in sports where they guys take the trophy and something happens with it. The same thing happened to me in Fort Worth when we won their first championship.
“I was there coaching and that trophy ended up on Highway 35 somewhere and we had to rebuild that one.”
Cheal said he wasn't sure what he had at first, but after posting a picture of the trophy on Facebook, he had plenty of offers to purchase the chalice.
"My Facebook blew up," he said. "I knew I had something bigger than I originally thought. At that point there was only one thing to do, and that was to donate it to the Sports Hall of Fame."
Hall of Fame executive director Diane Imrie said the plan is to eventually put the trophy on display in the May Street museum.
