What you’re looking at is a pristine, one-of-a-kind piece of alternative Canucks history: a 1994 Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box that Salutes the Stanley Cup Champion Vancouver Canucks. You’re probably well aware that this box of cereal doesn’t have all of its facts straight. What’s the story here?

This very real, sadly erroneous box belongs to “unrepentant Canucks fan” Bruce Young, managing principal for the Earnscliffe Strategy Group. How it came into his possession is quite the story.

In 1994, during the Canucks’ Stanley Cup run, he was working for then PM Jean Chretien at Liberal Party headquarters in Ottawa. As a UBC alum whose blood ran Canucks blue (or, at the time, Canucks red, which was a much less conspicuous blood colour), Young said it was “Painful not to be at home.” I’ll bet.

Even more painful were the events of Game 7, as Young and the rest of Canuck nation suffered the disappointment of Messier’s Rangers hoisting the Cup at Madison Square Garden.

After the game, Young got a message from an empathetic friend who worked for Kellogg’s. This friend, who will remain nameless, had a consolation gift for Young. It was this:

In anticipation of Game 7, Kellogg’s, then an official sponsor of the NHL, had printed boxes for both potential outcomes, a Canucks victory, or a Rangers victory. When the Rangers won the Cup, all of the Canuck boxes were destroyed.

Except, of course, this one, which Young’s friend smuggled out like a boss because he’s one of the world’s finest people.

Young said, when he received it, it was stuck between two sheets of cardboard and tucked into a green plastic garbage bag. Because he’s a smart man who knows pure gold when he sees it, he immediately took it to a framing place and had them hermetically seal it in acid-free paper and put it behind a glass frame. It’s had a place of prominence and honour in his life ever since.

Eventually, he brought it into the offices of Earnscliffe and hung it on the walls, where it’s been, understandably, a talking point ever since. “We treat it as a talisman around here,” said Young’s colleague, Marcella Munro, who sneaked the snapshots you’re seeing.

Young said that sometimes he looks at it during long and painful nights of imagining what it would have been like if Nathan Lafayette hadn’t hit the post. We can never really know, but we can safely say, at the very least, this box would have been filled with Corn Flakes.

Needless to say, Young is pretty excited about where the Canucks are these days. His son recently asked him, “Daddy, if the Canucks win, will you cry?” To this, he responded, “I’m gonna cry either way.”

Hopefully, the box’s information is just 17 years early, and Young’s tears are the joyful kind.