Hats, handshakes and a Stanley Special: Snoop Dogg on hockey tradition

Hockey has a lot of traditions because, as Snoop Dogg says, “it’s old as hell.”

Dogg Cherry, aka Snoop Lafleur, has been giving fans lessons in history, rules and many other aspects of the NHL through these Stanley Cup Playoffs on the league’s social media channels. He was back on Wednesday to talk about the various traditions around the league, from what fans throw on the ice and why they do it, to more long-standing ones like raising the Stanley Cup. If you haven’t seen Snoop’s contributions to this post-season, we highly recommend checking them out.

Snoop Dogg notes that it’s acceptable for fans to throw their hat on the ice whenever a player scores three times in a game and that those hats are usually either kept by the team, given to charity, or placed in the lost and found. That’s not what he would do with them, though.

[snippet id=3918715]

“I’d burn them,” he says. “I don’t want some dude’s old hat with dandruff and all kinds of stuff on his head. Don’t that get you lice?”

He also touches on “one of the most underrated things in hockey” by pointing to the handshake lines both teams go through following a playoff series.

“No matter if we had a fight or if we had a great series, or a tough battle, we’re going to shake hands and let’s go get something to drink man, talk about it. Ya dig?”

But the best of all, of course, is the tradition of lifting the Stanley Cup on the ice after you’ve won it.

“Stanley Special man,” he says. “When you hold Stanley, man, you get to pour a drink in Stanley, you get to take Stanley all over the world and have him for a day and hug him and kiss him.”

We’re no more than six games away from finding out who gets this year’s Stanley Special — and in the meantime we hope there are more Snoop specials on the way.

[relatedlinks]

When submitting content, please abide by our submission guidelines, and avoid posting profanity, personal attacks or harassment. Should you violate our submissions guidelines, we reserve the right to remove your comments and block your account. Sportsnet reserves the right to close a story’s comment section at any time.