NHL Commissioner's Award

The NHL approached Tokens & Icons in 2018 to create a Commissioner's Award to acknowledge annual team accomplishment. They coined it "The Stanley" and said only, "Think Oscars!"

Tokens prides itself in using "cycled out" game used artifacts, so we cut and bonded 11 plies of game used Winter Classic & Outdoor Games rink plexiglass.

Like the Oscars, the awards ceremonies are festive affairs. The NHL has made The Stanleys into an annual acknowledgement of business achievement, expanding beyond a single Commissioner's Award to providing Stanleys across a number of categories.

This has become an anticipated League event, with all 32 teams submitting their initiatives for consideration. At the Summer NHL club meetings, the 3 finalists' one-minute video submittals are played on screen, and then the winner is selected via an envelope just like the Oscars.

This proved to be a production challenge. The Trophy design is a statuette inspired by the Stanley Cup itself. The sheets of Winter Classic or Outdoor Games rink Plexiglass must be first laminated together into a block and then initially put on a lathe for 20 hours of shaping.

More recently, the Stanleys are crafted with a combination of lathe and CNC.

In 2025, we further refined the design of the trophy to align more closely with the actual Stanley Cup by hollowing out the cup.

After the shaping, an aluminum base is added along with engraving of the winning team and category.

Like the Stanley Cup itself, special artifacts deserve special handling. To ensure each Stanley would make the last leg of its journey safely home, we reached out to Clydesdale Custom Case Co., the makers of the actual Stanley Cup case, and partnered with them to manufacture smaller versions of the exact same case for each Stanley.

There are still nine teams which are vying for their first ever Stanley and we are hoping a number break the schneid in 2026!