The Rangers won their third Stanley Cup championship in 1940, and the same year the mortgage on Madison Square Garden was paid off. Management thought it would be symbolic to burn the mortgage in the Cup. The Rangers wouldn’t win the Cup again until 1994.

Some think burning an object in the Cup was sacrilege, and responsible for the Rangers’ 54-year Championship drought. Maybe it was the burning, or maybe it was Lynn Patrick and other teammates reportedly urinating on the Cup that evoked the curse.

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