Hardware robberies & coups?
Here's a case from 1969:
"On April 9, 1969, thieves forced in the front door of the Sports Hall of Fame and stole the Conn Smythe, Calder, and Hart trophies by smashing a display case with a shovel, but missed out on the Stanley Cup, which was away for maintenance. Bizarrely, the crooks declined to swipe the Prince of Wales, Norris, Lady Byng, and Art Ross trophies from the same broken case." (...)
A few days later, on April 11, an anonymous phone tip led police to a garage on Judson St. in Etobicoke, where the trophies and several skating medals were recovered undamaged.
And another one from 1970:
"Despite promising to beef up security around hockey’s hallowed silverware, there was another theft at the Hall of Fame in 1970. This time, crooks made off with the Stanley Cup collar—the three rings below the original bowl—containing the engraved names of the 1923-24, 1924-25, and 1925-26 champions.
It took several days for Hall of Fame curator Maurice Reid to notice the piece was missing from a special miniature display case. This time, it appeared the thief had simply deposited the unguarded 20 lb piece of silverware in a bag during regular visitor hours. (...)
In Sept., 1977, police constables William Thompson and Gordon Black, dispatched to a Toronto cleaning store, radioed a strange messing to their sergeant, Robert Morrison, at 54 Division. They said they had found a piece of the Stanley Cup wrapped in brown paper. “Are you crazy?,” Morrison said. Closer inspection revealed the metal rings containing the names of NHL greats like Jack Adams and Cecil Hart were genuine."
And another one:
"On Dec. 6, 1970, the Stanley Cup vanished along with the Conn Smythe and William Masterton trophies—the third successful heist in 20 months. A hyper-sensitive new alarm system, one that a mouse accidentally triggered earlier in the year, failed to sound because construction workers digging outside had accidentally damaged a critical wire.
“The bad joke going the rounds is that the Toronto Maple Leafs stole the Stanley Cup on Saturday because they won’t get it any other way,” the Globe and Mail quipped.
The next day, the NHL’s Clarence Campbell crushed the thieves’ elation. The original Stanley Cup, he said, was safe in a bank vault. The oldest parts of the trophy had become too brittle to be safely manhandled by celebrating hockey players, so the league had commissioned an identical presentation cup teams could fill with champagne or drop on the ground. (...)
A call did come in to Metro police, but it was Det. Sgt. Wallace Harkness, the head of the Metro police complaints bureau, who answered. The woman on the other end said the gang who had taken the cup intended to drop it in Lake Ontario unless their friend, in prison on a “serious robbery charge,” was released. (...) On Dec. 23, 1970, roughly three weeks after the cup vanished, Harkness woke to a sound outside his home on Presteign Ave. in East York. “We heard a noise and looked out,” he said. “and there they were between the car and the house.” The thieves had abandoned the Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe, and William Masterton trophies on the ground and fled."
Source:
The great Stanley Cup thefts of 1970 - Spacing Toronto
