<P> The Stanley Cup is a trophy awarded annually to the playoff champion club of the National Hockey League (NHL) ice hockey league . It was donated by the Governor General of Canada Lord Stanley of Preston in 1892, and is the oldest professional sports trophy in North America . Inscribed the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, the trophy was first awarded to Canada's amateur ice hockey clubs who won the trophy as the result of challenge games and league play . Professional clubs came to dominate the competition in the early years of the twentieth century, and in 1913 the two major professional ice hockey organizations, the National Hockey Association (NHA) (forerunner of the NHL) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), reached a gentlemen's agreement in which their respective champions would face each other in an annual series for the Stanley Cup . After a series of league mergers and folds, it became the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926, though it was nominally still subject to external challenge . After 1947, the Cup became the de jure NHL championship prize . </P> <P> From 1914 to the end of the 2017 season, the trophy has been won 99 times . 23 different teams have won the cup, 18 of which are still active in the NHL . Prior to that, the challenge cup was held by nine different teams . The Montreal Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup 24 times and made the finals an additional ten times . There were two years when the Stanley Cup was not awarded: 1919, because of the Spanish flu epidemic, and 2005, because of the NHL lockout . </P> <P> The origins of the Challenge era come from the method of play of the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada prior to 1893 . From 1887 to 1893, the league did not play a round - robin format, but rather challenges between teams of the association that year, with the winner of the series being the' interim' champion, with the final challenge winner becoming the league champion for the year . The Stanley Cup kept the tradition going, but added league championships as another way that a team could win the trophy . If a team in the same league as the current champion won the league championship, it would then inherit the Cup, without a challenge . The only time this rule was not followed was in 1904, when the Ottawa Senators club withdrew from its league, the CAHL . The trustees ruled that the Cup stayed with Ottawa, instead of the CAHL league champion . </P>

Which canadian hockey team has won the most stanley cups