Stanley's Cup

Infobox Television episode
Title = Stanley's Cup
Series = South Park


Caption = Stan and his team learn they will be playing in a professional hockey game.
Season = 10
Episode = 153
Airdate = November 15, 2006
Production =
Writer = Trey Parker
Director = Trey Parker
Guests =
Episode list = List of "South Park" episodes
Season list = Infobox South Park season 10 episode list
Prev =
Next ="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, and features Stan Marsh in a major role. It also features Kyle Broflovski, but the episode does not include Eric Cartman or Kenny McCormick.

Plot

The episode begins as Stan's bicycle is towed away for parking tickets. This 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.

As coach, he quickly runs into a whole host of problems — foremost, one of the kids has leukemia, which has already spread to his bone marrow. 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, though he claims to remember "going to Shakey's afterwards.")

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 are their opponents, 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 become "not worse, but [he's not] any better. It's almost as if his cancer is...tied."

The team is then invited to play against the superior Denver County 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 underdog movies, the team decides to believe in themselves and get a good player — 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, due to the Red Wings beating up the South Park players. 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" in a scene reminiscent of many sports movies, most notably The Mighty Ducks, a movie based upon Ice Hockey. The episode concludes with Nelson whispering "No hope... no... hope..." as he flatlines and dies.

External links

* [http://imdb.com/title/tt0897215/ "Stanley's Cup"] at IMDB.com
* [http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/index.php?season=10 "Episode guide, Season 10"] at [http://www.southparkstudios.com South Park Studios]