The Allan Cup is the trophy awarded annually to the senior ice hockey champions of Canada. It was donated by Sir Montagu Allan of Ravenscrag, Montreal, and has been competed for since 1909. The current champions are the Lacombe Generals, who captured the 2019 Allan Cup in Lacombe, Alberta. History In 1908, a split occurred in the competition of ice hockey in Canada. The top amateur teams left the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association, which allowed professionals, to form the new Inter-Provincial Amateur Hockey Union (IPAHU), a purely amateur league. The trustees of the Stanley Cup decided that the Cup would be awarded to the professional ice champion, meaning there was no corresponding trophy for the amateur championship of Canada. The Allan Cup was donated in early 1909 by Montreal businessman and Montreal Amateur Athletic Association president Sir H. Montagu Allan to be presented to the amateur champions of Canada. It was to be ruled like the Stanley Cup had, passed by champion to champion by league championship or challenge. Three trustees were named to administer the trophy: Sir Edward Clouston, President of the Bank of Montreal, Dr. H. B. Yates of McGill University, (donor of the Yates Cup to the Intercollegiate Rugby Union in 1898) and Graham Drinkwater, four-time Stanley Cup champion. The trophy was originally presented to the Victoria Hockey Club of Montreal, Quebec, members of the IPAHU, to award to the champions of the IPAHU. The first IPAHU champion, and by extension, first winner of the Cup was the Ottawa Cliffsides hockey club. After the season, the Cliffsides were defeated in the first-ever challenge by the Queen's University hockey club of Kingston, Ontario. In the early years, trustees of the Cup quickly came to appreciate the difficulties of organizing a national competition in so large a country. In 1914, at the suggestion of one of the trustees, Claude C. Robinson, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) was formed as a national governing body for the sport with W. F. Taylor as its first president. One of the CAHA's first decisions, in 1915, was to replace the challenge system with a series of national playoffs. Starting in 1920, the Allan Cup champion team would represent Canada in amateur play at the Olympics and World Championships. The CAHA used the profits from Allan Cup games as a subsidy for the national team. Competition for the cup was originally a