The Stanley Cup in Atlanta with Mike Huff: Great thing happens to a good person

The traditions of hoisting the trophy and skating a lap around the ice with it and drinking out of the actual bowl are without comparison in North American sports and maybe anywhere. It is guarded by the superstition that any player who touches the cup before winning it will never hoist it himself.

The names of members of the champion teams are inscribed into silver bands that wrap around the barrel of the trophy. When a band fills up, it is slid up one notch and the highest of the five bands on the trophy is then removed and put on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

Now, a few words about Mike Huff, the vice president of player engagement for the 2024 and 2025 Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. He’s 40 and grew up in Oklahoma. Until the Panthers hired him in 2021 to handle duties like travel logistics and providing off-ice care for players and their families, he knew next to nothing about hockey.

He previously lived in Atlanta, first working in the Georgia Tech athletic department and later for Delta Air Lines as a charter coordinator.

Huff is a really good guy — skilled and diligent in his work but, more importantly, a kind and humble person. I can attest. I came to know him during my time covering Tech when he worked in media relations and later in football operations for Hall of Fame coach Paul Johnson. For one football season, we shared a copy room as our workspace. We laughed a lot together, and I benefited from his efforts.

“He’s just one of the best people I’ve ever met,” former Kennesaw State assistant football coach Liam Klein, who worked with Huff at Tech, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He’s a really good friend.”

Members of the championship team receive one day with the cup for a personal celebration, one of the great traditions of any sport. And, as was reported earlier by my colleague Henri Hollis, Huff was granted a day with the cup for the second year in a row and this time chose to spend it in Atlanta. The NHL confirmed to the AJC that, while the Stanley Cup has visited our fair city previously for promotional purposes, this was the first time a member of a championship team had elected to spend his or her day with the Stanley Cup here.

As Huff shared his experiences of the day with The AJC, where he went and whom he shared the cup with, it made me think of a few things. How we’re never sure where life will lead us. How heartwarming it is when good things happen to good people. How uplifting it is when those good people share those good things with others.

To start, the list of the 2025 NHL champions inscribed on the cup includes one Mike Huff, who had been to one hockey game in his life before the Panthers hired him.

Teams limit the number of names that can go on the band, generally 52. And, as Huff explained, the players lobbied for his inclusion.

“I’m speechless,” he said. “And then seeing your name on there — you look up a few columns up and there’s Wayne Gretzky. That was, to me, like, so awesome.”

Last year, Huff spent his day with the cup in Fort Lauderdale with friends and family. He held an event with local businesses as a token of appreciation. He ate sushi out of the bowl, which he described as “really cool.”

This year — imagine having two separate days with the Stanley Cup — he chose to bring it to Atlanta, where he had spent many crucial years of his life and made a number of good friends. A person whose job includes creating travel itineraries, he got to work and made a plan for him and the cup that was precise to the minute.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

After the cup and its two caretakers touched down at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport from Montreal at about 9:40 a.m., he started at Delta, his former employer and the Panthers’ official airline. Serendipitously, Tuesday was the day that his former work group of charter coordinators held their annual summit in Atlanta. (With MLB off for the All-Star break, it is one of the rare days in the year when no pro sports team are traveling.)

He shared the cup with them and then took it to Delta’s operations control center, where all of the airline’s flights are monitored. He recalled heads popping up out of cubicles when an announcement was made of the cup’s presence. Staff quickly gathered for pictures.

“It was cool to see how excited they were,” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’m glad I’m not on an airplane right now.’”

(He was kidding.)

From there, he drove up to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. The hospital is dear to Huff, having often taken Yellow Jackets players there to visit with patients.

“I always loved doing that,” he said.

Huff lugged the trophy to the Arthur M. Blank Hospital’s Seacrest Studios, a space where patients can enjoy a creative outlet and also where programming can be broadcast throughout the hospital. Not long after word went out on the closed-circuit network, children started showing up in the studios, eager for an up-close look. Genevieve Sale, associate sports marketing coordinator for Children’s, reported about 10 to 15 patient visitors and lots of smiles, even from those who knew nothing about the cup. Many of these are children, Sale reminded, are in the toughest battles of their lives and in need of anything that can put a smile on their face.

“The kids were super happy,” Sale told The AJC. “Mike was awesome to work with and we’re super excited about that.”

Said Huff, “The children’s hospital, that put such a big smile on my face, seeing those kids get to see it, whether they know what it is or not.”

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

Another group that Huff wanted to share the cup with was the youth hockey community in Atlanta. A Panthers staffer connected Huff with former NHL player Anson Carter, who lives in Atlanta and arranged for three youth teams and their families to greet the cup at Alpharetta’s City Hall. Judging by video and photos, it was a crowd of hundreds.

“It was wild,” Huff said.

Huff talked with hordes of hockey fans who shared their stories or their Panthers fandom. Who knows how many dreams were both made and inspired by Huff’s decisions to share his lone day with hockey’s holy grail with strangers?

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Huff

“I think that’s a testament to who Mike is,” said Klein, his friend from Tech. “No one told him he had to go to CHOA.”

From there, the cup went into after-hours mode. Huff took it to Dunwoody Country Club and then a gathering of friends and family at the St. Regis Atlanta, where he and his guests drank Champagne out of the trophy’s bowl. Having grown up around the game in New Jersey, Klein needed no education on what it meant to sip from the Stanley Cup.

“I was in shock for a while,” he said. “I was kind of speechless. It was really amazing.”

From there, it was on to dinner at neighboring Chops, where Huff toted the Stanley Cup through the steakhouse and floored diners. And then a visit to Johnny’s Hideaway in Buckhead. Huff brought it onto the bar’s dance floor, where he was careful to avoid crashing it into the hanging disco ball.

For friends who wanted to drink out of it, Huff had to hoist the roughly 35-pound trophy himself, as cup rules permit only those whose names are engraved on it to hold it up.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Liam Klein

Credit: Photo courtesy of Liam Klein

Huff’s arms?

“They were really sore by the end of the night from all the hoisting, but totally worth it,” he said.

And, finally, as Atlanta social protocol would practically insist, a late-night meal at a Waffle House near Johnny’s. Huff used the cup to dine on waffles with syrup and butter.

“It actually tasted really good,” he said.

Finally, at 11:59 p.m., the cup’s caretakers packed up this most glorious trophy. And the cup’s first-ever day in Atlanta under the supervision of an NHL champion was over.

“Walked it out, put it in the case, said my final goodbyes,” Huff said.

Presented a day with one of sport’s treasured trophies, Huff scarcely could have spent it better. Sharing it with family, friends and former co-workers, but also with others who might benefit most from getting close to it, even people he’d never met and has nothing to gain from.

Huff said he was following the lead of his team. He recalled how team captain Aleksander Barkov, who made sure that the first players to skate the cup after Barkov’s lap were players who had never won it. In the same vein, Huff wanted to make his day about others.

“I felt like it was a successful day,” he said. “What was achieved, I can’t really tell you, other than I think it made people happy.”

In that way, a most rare day for Huff was not unlike the rest of them.

“He’s never changed,” Klein said. “Even with all the success he has, he’s still just a very humble, down-to-earth, great person and he’s always thinking about other people.”

A worthy champion.