mighty ducks of anaheim

Grant and Brett - obvious ducks' fans

Grant, hiu bball, gave a speech in communication class to persuade us that the NHL is better than the NBA. He sold me on the hockey fights alone. The NHL allows for fights during the match: they are at center rink for 5 minutes and all the players move out of the way and pick things up so that the fighters have plenty of room to get in their blows in. The fights are definitely initiated, usually one player asks an opponent if they want to fight and the other obliges and they begin. Just like checking an opponent into the boards during play, a team captain or leader will initiate a fight if they feel like their team morale is down. Beating on other players seems to pump everyone up... it replaces the need, really, for cheerleaders - unless you believe cheerleaders serve a purpose beyond leading cheers and raising team morale =)... ok they are a little entertaining BUT DID YOU COME TO SEE THE GAME OR THE ONES CHEERING FOR IT?


Last night we went to ESPNzone @ Downtown Disney for dinner and, of course, game 3 of the Stanley Cup Playoff series between the Ducks and the Colorodo Avalanche. Going into the 3rd match the Avalanche remained scoreless in the series and the Ducks were sitting on a comfortable start, 2-0. I'm not going to lie, during the game I was watching the NBA playoffs and random baseball games on competing monitors instead, but when the hockey game, tied at 3's, went into over-time my eyes didn't wander. The annoying thing about hockey is that I can never track the puck - especially on the shots... you see the guy slap the stick really hard and then a couple moments later you either see a mob of players jolt in a general direction and just assume the black disk is somewhere in that general area OR a loud buzzer goes off, the crowd goes crrrrraazy and you see the puck hanging out in the back of the net. In the Stanley Cup Finals a tied game will not end until a goal is scored in the over time periods, each are 20 minutes long. Brett said that a game recently went into 4 over time periods - that is craziness, an extra hour of play, a total of no more than 105 min. Then I realized that in soccer you play for two 45 minute halves plus stopage time (usually no more than a handful of minutes) and then if you endure two scoreless over time halves you proceed to Penalty Kicks, a total of more than 110 min of play and more for PK's. Brett would argue that in Hockey you are using waaaaay more strength and energy - considering that we don't drop our stuff in the middle of the match and start brawling, I could imagine that we do use less. The Ducks managed to score a sweet goal just before the first over-time period ended to take the series 3-0.

if you absolutely have to use the restroom during play NO WORRIES because there's a complimentary monitor for each stall to ensure that you do not miss a pass, a shot or - God forbid - A GOAL!