Who was the first Stanley Cup winner?
List of Stanley Cup champions
The WHL folded in 1926, and its assets were bought by the NHL. This left the NHL as the only league left competing for the Cup. Other leagues and clubs have issued challenges, but from that year forward, no non-NHL team has played for it, leading it to become the de facto championship trophy of the NHL.[27] In 1947, the NHL reached an agreement with trustees P. D. Ross and Cooper Smeaton to grant control of the Cup to the NHL, allowing the league itself to reject challenges from other leagues that may have wished to play for the Cup.[30][31] A 2006 Ontario Superior Court case found that the trustees had gone against Lord Stanley's conditions in the 1947 agreement.[32] The NHL has agreed to allow other teams to play for the Cup should the league not be operating, as was the case in the 2004–05 NHL lockout.[31]