A monument commemorating the 1903 Stanley Cup victory by the original Ottawa Senators has been smashed to pieces.

Vandals stole the plaque at Bay and Gladstone and shattered the granite pedestal overnight, possibly at about 2 a.m., said Ottawa police Const. Marc Denis.

'What more can go wrong? The Senators have injured players, they've lost two games in the Stanley Cup playoffs and now their plaque has been destroyed.'— Hockey historian Paul Kitchen

"We have several witnesses who heard smashing and they saw some individuals who were likely involved," he said.

The monument was at the site of the Dey Arena, where the Ottawa Senators defeated the Montreal Victorias 105 years ago.

The arena burned down in 1920.

On Monday, as the current Ottawa Senators prepared to face the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 3 of their Stanley Cup Eastern Conference quarter-final at Scotiabank Place, Paul Kitchen looked down at the broken pieces of granite littering the sidewalk.

"Well, I guess I'm disappointed and I say to myself, 'What more can go wrong? The Senators have injured players, they've lost two games in the Stanley Cup playoffs and now their plaque has been destroyed.'"

Kitchen, a local hockey historian who paid almost $4,000 of his own money to put up the monument 11 years ago, said he doesn't believe the culprits had any sense what the plaque represented: "It looks to me like it might have been just some sort of lark."

He is appealing to the thieves to return the plaque, no questions asked.