​Stanley Cup glory for the Hurricanes has quickly faded into a swirl of unanswered questions after their engraving of one of sport’s most revered trophies. Nearly a month after Carolina captured its first NHL title in two decades, the team this week revealed the names etched onto the Stanley Cup, and with a notable twist. Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon is listed first, as is customary, but his name is followed by those of his wife, Veruschka, and each of their five children. It’s not unusual for some owners’ family members to appear on the Cup, but usually only when they also hold a formal role within the organization, such as alternate governor or someone working in hockey or business operations. That was the case with the Panthers after their consecutive championships in 2024 and 2025, when owner Vinnie Viola was listed on the Stanley Cup alongside his wife, Teresa, and their three children, all of whom served as alternate team governors.
Yet that is not the situation in Carolina. Veruschka Dundon and the Dundon children do not have official roles with the Hurricanes, and the children are mostly school-aged, with some as young as seven. The Dundon names occupy the entire first two lines of the team’s Stanley Cup entry, totaling 90 characters. Because the Cup’s engraving cap allows a maximum of 55 names, including all the Dundon children compelled the final list to exclude several other Hurricanes personnel. Among those left off were longtime equipment manager Bobby Gorman, with the franchise since its Hartford Whalers days and part of the 2006 Cup-winning team’s lore, and defenseman Joel Nystrom, who appeared in 38 regular-season games for Carolina. Also omitted were the team’s three minority owners.
Both the Hurricanes and the NHL declined to comment on the engraving. “The Stanley Cup goes to the players first,” TSN legal analyst and Canadian radio host Eric Macramalla tweeted. “By allowing the names of the owner’s kids to be engraved on the Cup—and ahead of the players to boot—is a troubling step toward an owner-first culture. That’s not hockey.”
Engraving the Stanley Cup involves a framework of rules and oversight. In addition to the 55-name limit, a roster of names must be submitted to the NHL for review. The league seeks to ensure that players, coaches, and certain hockey operations staff meet various criteria, such as a performance threshold like a minimum appearance in games, to secure a spot. Yet engraved names of non-playing personnel are far more at the discretion of the club’s ownership, a latitude that Tom Dundon appears to have exercised here with particular emphasis.
The issue is not isolated to a single franchise eccentricity. The broader history of Cup engravings contains its own irregularities and debates over who deserves a spot on the Cup. The present example has rekindled discussions about the balance between honoring ownership’s family ties versus honoring the players and staff who actually built the championship run. The controversy has put a spotlight on the nuances of Cup engravings, the criteria that govern them, and the competing interests at stake when a trophy’s inscription becomes a reflection of organizational priorities rather than solely on-ice performance.