As often as Blues fans have fantasized over the years about winning the Stanley Cup and having a parade on Market Street, they’ve also yearned to see a championship banner raised to the rafters at Enterprise Center.
The night finally came Wednesday, and about seven hours before it went up, Brenda Wilbur, the Blues’ senior director of branding and creative, was doing a little day-dreaming herself.
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“It’s very exciting to know that it’s here,” she said. “I’m more excited to see the fans’ reaction than me seeing it go up because I’ve seen it.”
Wilbur did more than just see the Stanley Cup banner. She designed it and was among a small group of people who kept the details top secret until the magical moment when 18,096 fans and a national TV audience watched the 10-by-14-foot symbol of success ascend 86 feet in about 90 seconds.
The club would go on to lose 3-2 in overtime to Washington in its regular-season opener, but it was a game, or least a pregame, that many won’t forget.
The project began about two-and-a-half months ago, or shortly after the Blues beat Boston 4-1 in Game 7. They didn’t need that much time to create the banner, but because the team would be giving away replica banners to the first 12,000 fans in attendance on Oct. 5, and those needed 100 days of lead time, there needed to be a design to replicate.
“It’s actually a very quick process, but you had to start it earlier because of the giveaway,” Wilbur said.
The Blues already had a partnership with The Flag Loft, a local company that has been in business since 1991 and started doing work with the club in 2000. The company, owned by Rick Kelly, has taken care of the club’s conference championship banners and the “History Made” banners seen at the parade.
The Flag Loft printed banners for the Blues that were used at the team’s Stanley Cup parade. (Rick Kelly/The Flag Loft)
So after a few conversations with the NHL about the usage of the Stanley Cup image and examining what other clubs had done in the past, Wilbur put pen to paper and crafted what she envisioned would be on the Blues’ banner.
“There weren’t a lot of elements to it because you want to focus on the Cup, the Note and the year,” she said. “We definitely wanted to make sure that the Cup was the focal point. Some teams don’t use the Cup, which is odd to me. I’m like, ‘This is your one time to be able to do that,’ so we definitely took advantage of that.”
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Wilbur took two different designs to Chris Zimmerman, the Blues’ CEO of business operations, and Steve Chapman, the team’s chief revenue officer, to get their feedback before sending the plans off to The Flag Loft.
“I thought they were both outstanding,” Chapman said. “We kind of have a similar taste in that we like a classic, clean style. Don’t do something that’s not going to look good five years from now. She made some great designs and we picked out one.”
But there’s more that goes into a Stanley Cup banner than the look of it. The material also takes careful consideration.
“You don’t want it to be too shiny or too matte,” Wilbur said. “You’re also making sure that sound can pass through the material. So it’s not just the design, but the materiality and functionality of the banner itself.”
For the Blues’ banner, the entire image is printed on a fabric known as 270 VorTex, which is different than what’s used for conference championship and number retirement banners. Those are done in 200 denier nylon, and the image is sewn on, not printed.
“If we had to hand-sew the image of the Cup, we wouldn’t be able to put any names or anything like that on there,” Kelly said. “It would be a little bit more of a general type of banner with some shading. They wanted an actual Cup printed on there, so we printed on the banner.”
The Flag Loft sent the Blues a swatch of what their Stanley Cup banner would look like. (Brenda Wilbur)
After emailing Wilbur a PDF file of the banner, Kelly sent her a sample swatch so that she could see how the picture would appear on the material.
“Does it look pixelated or anything like that, because you’re taking this image and you’re blowing it up 10 times the original size,” Wilbur said.
The next challenge was how big did the Blues want to make the banner. They had reorganized their conference and division banners in the rafters to accommodate the Stanley Cup banner, but there were a lot of other factors that went into the size of it.
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“You want to make it slightly larger than all the other championship banners, so that it has more prominence,” Wilbur said. “But you want to make sure that the people in the suites can see (the game), so that’s something that you have to think about size-wise. We want to make it as big as we can, but visibility is key. We don’t want people not to be able to see around the banner.”
To help with that, Kelly visited Enterprise Center and brought along a couple of American flags that were different sizes, so that Wilbur could see the samples in the spot where the Stanley Cup banner would go and decide which dimensions she liked.
“I met with Brenda and we went out in the stadium, trying to figure out the sizing,” Kelly said. “It was a little bit back and forth with the sizing, but we gave them the U.S. flags for some scale before we decided on the size.”
They chose 10-by-14.
“For our ceremony, it will get raised to the (middle) rafters, like we do with any retirement banner,” said Chris Frome, the Blues’ senior director of event presentation. “But then the next game, it’ll be in its proper spot.”
The hole in the rafters waiting for the championship banner. (Jeremy Rutherford/The Athletic)
Throughout the process, Wilbur admitted being nervous about there being a mistake.
“When you see the proof, it’s like, ‘Is anything spelled wrong?’” she said. “When someone says, ‘Brenda,’ you’re like, ‘What’s wrong?’”
But six weeks after Kelly received the design, it would be too late for any mix-ups, as the ink was coloring in the image.
“You’re just watching the machine go back and forth,” he said. “It’s probably only doing about an inch every two minutes. Some people might think it’s dull, but it’s kind of cool. ”
Kelly took a couple of pictures in the shop but quickly realized that wasn’t very wise.
“I thought, ‘I can’t do that,’ so I deleted them from my phone in case my phone got stolen,” he said.
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When the banner was finished, The Flag Loft hand-delivered it to Enterprise Center, where it was kept under a watchful eye.
“Immediately upon arrival, we hung it up in a secured area,” Frome said. “There was maybe only three sets of eyeballs that have seen it.”
It was held at nearby Stifel Theatre and hung up to avoid any wrinkles.
“It’s double-sided, so we had to put a vinyl liner in it,” Kelly said. “When you put a liner in something, you’re preventing the image from being seen in a shadowing effect. They probably have the highest beam lights in the stadium, and if there’s lighting behind it, you don’t want the shadow of the Cup on the opposite side being seen through. So we had to put a vinyl liner in it, and it’s thick, so what ends up happening is it has a memory to it and you might get a fold in there that takes a while to get out. I told them, ‘Just make sure it’s always as flat as possible.’”
Before it was raised to the rafters at Enterprise Center, the Blues’ Stanley Cup banner was hidden at Stifel Theatre. (Brenda Wibur)
Now seeing the final version of the banner for the first time, Wilbur was in awe.
“Yeah, it’s amazing to see it, what you designed come to fruition,” she said.
The Blues then packed it up to carry over to Enterprise Center for a dress rehearsal Tuesday night.
“We wrapped it up so that no one would even see it when we transported it from one building to the next,” Frome said.
The test-run began after 5 p.m., so that most employees had left the building and wouldn’t have a chance to take a picture.
“The social media policy was in effect,” Frome said. “We actually went around, and if we saw anybody, we made sure to tell them, ‘Please do not take any photos. Respect the banner, respect the Cup, let it be for the fans.”
For the few involved in the rehearsal, Chapman made the same request.
“We didn’t want this one getting out,” he said. “We just said, ‘Hey guys, no pictures tonight, don’t take one home to show the wife or kids or whatever. It’s been 52 years, when this thing comes out, let it be the first time that St. Louis has seen it.’”
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They practiced hoisting the banner about 10 times.
“We worked with NBC to make sure that their shots would all be perfect,” Frome said.
It was rolled back up Tuesday night, and then a little after 7 p.m. Wednesday went on the ice for the moment everyone had been anticipating.
Play Gloria (one more time). #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/Mi4nyCFJPW
— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) October 3, 2019
“It was unbelievable,” Blues coach Craig Berube said. “It really was. I mean, it’s a huge thing, it’s a great thing for the city and the fans and the organization.”
“It was pretty special,” Blues goalie Jordan Binnington added. “Good job all around. It was a great show.”
Chapman watched the ceremony with goose-bumps.
“I knew everything that was going to happen and I had chills,” he said. “You know what, that banner symbolizes a whole lot of pride and a whole lot of teamwork. That’s what it symbolizes, and you want it to reflect that, and I think it’s a great banner.”
Wilbur and Kelly were both proud of their work.
“It’s definitely something that I’ll always remember, knowing that I designed it and I get to come to games and see it,” Wilbur said.
“I will say there is a little bit of pride involved,” Kelly said. “Every time I’m driving around and I see our flags and banners somewhere, I say, ‘Hey, we did that.’ It makes you feel special.”
(Top photo: Joe Puetz/NHLI via Getty Images)