(Each week, MassLive will dig back into the past, pick a certain year, and time-frame, and relive what was happening with the Patriots)
The year: 2017
The news: Nine years ago today, the Patriots received their championship rings from Super Bowl LI at a lavish party thrown by team owner Robert Kraft. That was after the improbable comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons.
The Lombardi Trophy - the fifth the team had won at that point - was on display. And it got Rob Gronkowski thinking.
The team's legendary tight end, who is also a hockey fan, said he wished the NFL had a tradition like the NHL, where players are each allowed to spend the day with the Stanley Cup.
Gronkowski wanted equal time with the Lombardi.
Given some of the crazy stories about what players had done with the iconic Stanley Cup, that fell right into Gronk's wheelhouse.
“I’d run around and go crazy with it. I’d show it off everywhere,” Gronkowski told me at the time. “I can’t reveal all the details. It’d be all on the spot, all improv. Whatever crazy thing I could think of at the moment, that’s what I would do with it.”
Teammate Danny Amendola was also a fan of the trophy for the day for winning teams of the Lombardi.
“Yeah, I love that tradition for hockey players. They’re party animals anyway,” Amendola said. “They drink a lot of beer out of that thing. I can only imagine the stories.”
The Lombardi, however, doesn’t lend itself to that kind of fun.
“You’d like to cut the top off it, so you could drink from it, or put a straw in it,” said Amendola. “That’d be funny.”
Needless to say, Gronkowski never got his wish. While the NHL still has its tradition, the NFL didn't take Gronk's advice and adopt it.
