2011-12 Hockey Road Trip: Game Eight - Anaheim vs. Ottawa

Anaheim vs. Ottawa
Honda Centre; Anaheim, California

1.00pm; January 21, 2012

Anaheim def. Ottawa 2-1

Honda Centre in Anaheim was the first place I ever saw live NHL hockey and I remember it like it was yesterday. Sadly, it was four years ago - yeah, we're all getting old - but it made an incredible impression on me. It was the Ducks and the Dallas Stars, the season after the Ducks had won the Stanley Cup. It was loud inside Honda Centre. I had lost my voice; a bad combination of a stuffy hotel room and a fourteen hour flight from Sydney. Still, it was one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen; a game as brutal as it is beautiful. There was a fight, there were goals, and there was a lot of noise. I was hooked.

Back, nearly four years later, the team is different. Chris Kunitz is gone, JS Giguere is gone - ironically, he will be in net for the Colorado Avalanche against Los Angeles, the second game of our Super Saturday double - and so is the coach, Randy Carlyle, quickly replaced by ousted Washington Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau. Still there from the nucleus of that Cup team is Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf and the ageless wonder, Teemu Selanne, still going at age 41.

The Ducks ice perhaps the best all-around line in the NHL, that of Perry, Getzlaf and the young American sensation Bobby Ryan. Like with Alex Ovechkin, when these three are on the ice, you get the sense that at any moment something amazing could happen. They were responsible for some of the best plays of the game today, and Perry managed to get the puck in the crease, make a move and rocket a shot into the water bottle for the first goal of the game.

It was Lubomir Vishnovsky who iced the game, a crazy sequence of events that ended up netting the Ducks their second of the contest, and behind Jonas Hiller, another in a long line of incredible goalies we've had the privilege of watching on this trip, the Ducks held on for a 2-1 victory and are looking pretty good right now. Bruce Boudreau has them rolling nicely. There's definitely enough talent to carry them deep into the playoffs.

So that's Game One of the Super Saturday double header. It's off down the road to Los Angeles for the Kings vs. the Colorado Avalanche at 7.30pm, the last game of the road trip!