Anaheim Ducks fans: we need to get over ourselves. The Los Angeles Kings are a very good team, and pretty soon we won’t be able to laugh derisively while we point at them with a Cup-ringed finger.

Now, hold your rotten fruit and vitriol before you earnestly launch them in my direction — the Kings becoming hockey’s kings might not be the end of the world.

Consider for a moment the situation as we have watched it unfold on the ice via our television screens. When the Kings backed into the playoffs, few took them seriously. In fact, other than the Washington Capitals, perhaps no other team had so conspicuously failed to live up to lofty predictions this season. And much like the Capitals are now doing, the Kings are surpassing even the wildest pre-playoff expectations that had been beset by more than six months of inconsistent scoring and other sundry underachievement.

What are we as rival fans supposed to do — how are we supposed to feel? — when we must bear witness to one of our greatest enemies realizing an unexpected abundance of success? The answer may surprise you as much as it surprised me when the thoughts began crossing my mind.

It would not be outlandish to claim there was a nontrivial percentage of Ducks fans rooting for the Kings to defeat the Vancouver Canucks in the first round of this year’s playoffs. Whether that debt of schadenfreude is being repaid ironically is a matter for another debate, but the Kings are now sitting on the cusp of a trip to the Western Conference final series.

The team has found success through a combination of shrewd coaching, timely scoring, stingy defensive play, dividends from mid-season trade acquisitions and most importantly, airtight goaltending. What team does that call to mind (and don’t pick the obvious “2004 Calgary Flames” option)? Both Ducks squads that made trips to the Stanley Cup final had some or all of these elements, and watching the current Kings slowly decimate the best teams in the West has a satisfyingly familiar feel to it.

In the midst of this success, what right do we have as fans of a team not even two decades old to denigrate them for their past failures and resultant tribulations? Having only had to wait a dozen or so years to witness the Ducks capture hockey’s top prize, it’s spurious to claim we know how true Stanley Cup heartache feels. To put it in perspective, the Toronto Maple Leafs are the subject of frequent and incessant ridicule for a championship drought that has extended 45 years. The Los Angeles Kings entered the NHL in 1967: 45 years ago. While Hollywood may not jeer the team in the same scornful manner as a wantonly desperate Canadian fan base, the burden borne has been, for all intents and purposes, identical.

Speaking of Hollywood, Anaheim isn’t exactly what one might qualify as a traditional hockey market. Although neither city is in danger of losing its franchise, it bears mentioning that any success for hockey in the sunbelt is a success for all of the teams in it. In many ways, it was the Kings who paved the Ducks’ way into the NHL after Wayne Gretzky showed California kids that hockey was cool, too. Objectively speaking, their fans are entitled to as much happiness as any other expansion-era team (some of whom have already won a Stanley Cup), regardless of whether or not we subjectively feel they deserve it. That their team’s biggest crime is its proximity to our own is not in and of itself a reason to deny them their successes, especially because we were here second (technically third, if you count a certain teal-clad team to the north).

The last best reason Ducks fans should not despair over the Kings’ present success is simple: it will drive their own team to be better. After all, what calibre of rivalry exists when one of the participants never occupies the high ground? For the past five years, Ducks fans have been able to gleefully crow about their team being the first in California to cross the proverbial finish line. But as the years have dragged on and seen the Ducks’ on-ice fortunes sallow, the championship refrain has begun to ring hollow in everybody’s ears. A Kings Cup win would do more than kick a little kindling onto that dying fire — it would reignite the argumentative passions of both fan bases with all the fervor of scorching rocket fuel blasting a NASA shuttle into outer space. A bitter pill to swallow for Ducks fans, to be sure. At the same time, however, it will make Anaheim’s next Stanley Cup win — after which we can all flash a victory sign with a ring on both fingers — that much more fulfilling.

So if that fateful day arrives — in our lifetimes — when the Los Angeles Kings hoist the Stanley Cup, take heart: at least they’re not the San Jose Sharks.

OK, you can throw that fruit now.

Weigh in with your thoughts by reaching out to us on Twitter (@ducksallday).

Disclaimer:  I would like to personally apologize for the lack of updates recently. With the Ducks out of the playoffs, the imperative to keep up with NHL happenings seems to have fallen by the wayside. Moving forward, more frequent updates — along with a new issue of Puq magazine — should be in the offing.

The following story appeared in the March 4th issue of Puq Magazine.

There was a certain magic about the 2007 Anaheim Ducks championship team, and it had nothing to do with its twin pillars on defense (Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger). It didn’t have anything to do with its two excellent goaltenders, each a possessor of impressive playoff records. It didn’t even concern the youthful infusion of talent brought to the table by the wonder “twins” Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.

It was the swagger of a team that had the best third line in hockey.

To that team, the triumvirate of Samuel Pahlsson, Rob Niedermayer and Travis Moen was its special sauce — the secret ingredient that enabled coach Randy Carlyle to employ his own brand of Ducks hockey. To opponents, it meant that they could not rely on their star players, especially at the Honda Center when Carlyle had last line change.

The line was lights out, effectively neutralizing the opposition’s top threat: through the 2007 playoffs, they shut down the likes of Pavel Datsyuk, Jason Spezza and the Sedin twins. Moreover, they often outscored them, too. Given their dominance in all three zones, it is nearly impossible to quantify what that iteration of the Ducks’ checking line meant to the franchise.

Like all good things, however, it was not meant to last. Not quite two seasons removed from their Stanley Cup victory, the line was disbanded when general manager Bob Murray shipped out Pahlsson and Moen at the trade deadline. Since then, myriad players have filled perfunctory third line roles, but fans — and it seemed players, too — were led to believe the team needed a prodigious shutdown line to excel.

Now would be a good time to firmly and finally squash that idea. The Ducks under Bruce Boudreau have proven that they can thrive on offense when they’re unleashed.

The shutdown line, as it were, is dead. Long live the shutdown line.

It’s not that the Ducks’ players are defensively irresponsible. Instead, the burden of two-way play has been spread across all the lines. Compulsively matching shifts has taken a back seat to giving each player an opportunity to succeed in various situations. And thanks to players like rookie Devante Smith-Pelly, the swagger is not entirely absent from the bottom-six.

The question facing the Ducks this summer — with a potential lockout and expiring contracts looming — is what sort of identity they want to embody. The old checking line was integral to the team’s rough and tumble image. Other teams loathed playing Anaheim because they knew they would pay a physical price.

The current team lacks any starkly defining characteristics. It has good goaltending, a functional defense and an offense that runs hot and cold. In other words, this iteration of the Ducks is still a bubble team that can win just as easily as it can lose on any given night.

So yes, it may be a myth that it needs an elite group of defensive forwards to succeed. And it may be that the team finds success running its own version of the west coast offense — it certainly has the necessary firepower at the top, if not throughout the entire lineup.

Ultimately, what the Ducks desperately need is an identity — a personality all their own that will breed confidence. If it happens to come from forwards seven through nine on the depth chart, so be it.

What’s new this month? We take a look at the Ducks’ chances of qualifying for the playoffs, the decision to not deal Teemu Selanne at the deadline and the importance of having a gritty checking line. On top of all that, there is tons of great new exclusive artwork featured inside AND a great peek at a couple of prospects who will be available in June’s draft (special thanks to Alex Adrian).

Thank you again for being the best fans in hockey.

The following story appeared in the January 31st issue of Puq Magazine.

It’s an age-old question about age-old players — how long after their play begins to decline does their team have an obligation to keep paying them for their services?

For the Anaheim Ducks, it’s a question that has never even crossed the minds of management when Teemu Selanne is the subject of conversation.

Over the past six years, Selanne has consistently proven that age ain’t nothin’ but a number to him. Transmogrifying like the NHL’s very own version of Benjamin Button, he is still producing at a point-per-game pace. At 41, most players are looking retirement in their rearview mirrors. Selanne, however, has abstained and in doing so continued his assault on the record books.

As with every off-season since the 2005 lockout, the Ducks were again forced to play a game of Schrodinger’s Selanne — contemplate their future with and without him — last summer. But true to form, Teemu decided to extend his farewell tour because he still felt as though he had something left to give. Additionally, the Ducks’ opening weekend schedule included a game in Finland, and a homecoming visit would be the perfect start to the season.

Unfortunately for the Ducks, things didn’t go so well to start the year. Facing some perplexing issues regarding its goaltending and stars not playing up to their salaries, the team became mired in a slump that cost head coach Randy Carlyle his job.

One player who did not share the team’s woes? Selanne, of course. Through the tribulations, he was able to put up an average of a point per game, proving to all that while the team appeared ready to pack it in, he would not quit.

Frankly, it was an embarrassment to the fans that their favorite team, was not, by and large, putting in an honest day’s work while the elder statesman of the franchise was left to shoulder the load alone.

But that all changed very abruptly when the calendar flipped from 2011 to 2012. A most amazing thing happened, something that many could not have foreseen as the catalyst to a reversal of the team’s fortunes: Jason Blake returned to the lineup. It’s not that Blake’s return in and of itself was the harbinger of change for the Ducks, but it certainly set into motion a chain of causality that has the team thinking it might have an outside shot at the playoffs — a thought that was all but statistically impossible a few weeks ago.

Instead of reuniting Blake with Selanne, head coach Bruce Boudreau slotted the former onto the third line alongside speedster Andrew Cogliano and rookie Nick Bonino. That left Selanne lining up next to fellow Finns Niklas Hagman and Saku Koivu. It was a combination that had strangely not been explored more than superficially since the Ducks completed their Finnish triumvirate by acquiring Hagman in the fall.

Suddenly, everything clicked.

Although it’s hard to draw any explicit connection between the new lineup combinations and the concurrent surge in Jonas Hiller’s play, there is no doubt that their coincidental timing has been key to the Ducks’ newfound success.

The chemistry Selanne discovered playing alongside Koivu and Hagman is uncanny, and it mirrors the resurgence of the bottom-six forwards. For the first time in recent memory, the Ducks have reasonably competent third and fourth lines, even if they’re collectively a little less stout than their previous incarnations.

Despite the renewed optimism in Anaheim, it seems like the 2012 playoffs are still nothing more than a dream at this point. Given the circumstances, the next question that must be asked is, “With all the promise the Ducks have been demonstrating of late, would Selanne consider coming back for another year?”

It’s hard to speculate about his motivations or what might tip the scales in favor of those who hope to see him take another victory lap, but it’s likely the same thought will be crossing everybody’s mind at the conclusion of this campaign.

One more year? Bring it on.

What’s in this great issue? Without spoiling too much, we cover the Winter Classic, the World Junior Hockey Championship, the Ducks’ recent turnaround and there’s even a handy February calendar marked with the schedule and a few other important Ducks dates.

Hope you all read it and enjoy it. Thanks for being such a great community.

Playoffs? Don’t talk about ­— playoffs?! You kidding me?! Playoffs?!

In so many words: yes, with a couple of caveats.

By now, most sports fans are familiar with that particular rant, unleashed by football coach Jim E. Mora when asked about his team’s chances of making the playoffs. We have not to-date  — unfortunately — seen Bruce Boudreau go on a similar tirade, but perhaps that’s for want of the appropriate question. More likely, it’s because we fans have simply refused to acknowledge the thought ever since the Ducks hit rock-bottom around Christmas.

That was just fine by me, by the way. Numbing myself to the idea of the Ducks sliding out of the playoff picture helped deal with the reality and had me looking forward to a lottery pick in what’s expected to be a deep draft this June.

Then the team had to go and start winning. And winning. Before you know it, I started seeing talk of a playoff berth creep into the discourse surrounding the team, and I am sad to report that I got sucked in. Not that I ever really believed it.

Until now, that is.

Now I have to face the reality that my favorite team might qualify for the playoffs. The horror.

Before you rush to console me — or if you’re a Sharks fan, savor my bitter tears — consider this: my team almost matched its win total from the first three months of the season in the past three weeks alone.

Now the Ducks are in a tenuous position. They are close enough to contention that a few more wins will have them in the mix for a playoff berth. However, they are also precipitously close to the edge of the abyss, and another slide will eliminate them with extreme prejudice. It is in this purgatory where my greatest fears lie.

My primary concern is for the integrity of the team’s roster. Although far from perfect, the extant lineup has finally found some chemistry and it’s hard to fathom any transaction that could objectively improve it.

If Bob Murray is trigger-happy around the trade deadline, he had better be prepared to accept only overpayments and not push the panic button in a vain attempt to salvage this season.

To that end, it is better that the team should fall out of contention quickly so Murray will not be tempted to make any moves with undue haste.

Another concern I have is with the future of the organization. As much as it has hurt to watch my favorite team crash and burn this season, the silver lining was always the knowledge that the 2012 draft was expected to bear exceptional talents to the teams choosing near the top of the heap.

I would never publicly accede to my satisfaction regarding the team’s failures, but drafting a Nail Yakupov-like player is not an opportunity often afforded to teams like the Ducks. True, there is not much honor in tanking, but if the playoffs are a statistical impossibility, why not make the most of it?

The likely scenario is that the Ducks continue to play up to their talent until the end of the season and finish out of the playoffs, but above the Western Conference basement. If that’s the case, I’ll have to console myself with the fact that for every Mario Lemieux that rewards a tanking team, there is an Alexandre Daigle waiting to be chosen and even the karmic score.

It’s no shock for Ducks fans to hear about their team’s subpar goaltending this season — subpar play all around, really. Happily, things have been looking up of late. The team is on a roll and maligned goaltender Jonas Hiller has finally begun to play like the all-star he used to be. Has it been enough to wash away the early season disappointment? You be the judge:

Click to enlarge.

As the owner of a blog dedicated primarily to one particular topic (i.e. Anaheim Ducks hockey), it is incumbent upon me not to editorialize on too many issues beyond the purview of our normal coverage. One reason for that is to avoid diluting our product and see it reduced to just another unfocused site in a sea of billions. The other, more important reason is to avoid alienating readers who may not share those opinions. On matters of professional sport, spirited debate is expected and even welcomed. On issues of politics, however, it can be a real minefield, and sites like ours are wise to leave its navigation to the experts.

Today, I am here to tell you the debate surrounding internet freedom is one issue about which I will not be silent.

Two bills are currently making their way through various levels of the United States government, each with the purported aim of thwarting internet “piracy” (I use quotes because it’s actually copyright infringement — might as well call a spade a spade). SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA, or the PROTECT IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property) Act, both promise to protect the work of American rightsholders from the threat of foreign thievery. Far be it from me to question the true motivation behind the bills or the $94 million the entertainment industry paid to have them drafted, but suffice it to say that the ambiguity in the language within them is enough to not only stifle innovation in the technology sector — one of the few growth industries in a still-reeling American economy — but also leave innumerable innocent bystanders upended in its wake. Ironically, they will ultimately fail at the very tasks they have set out to accomplish.

Indeed, it would be a slippery slope if the entertainment industry had the ability to bend the letter and spirit of the law to their liking. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA, as it’s commonly referred to), although itself not a good piece of legislation and still frequently abused by the industry, still contains an invaluable safe-harbor provision that protects sites from liability if its users are engaging in infringing activity, so long as they comply with takedown requests. SOPA, on the other hand, makes no pretensions of allowing for due process and could theoretically allow a plaintiff to effectively remove a defendant’s entire web site from the internet before the latter has a change to even examine the charges that have been levied.

Reddit sysadmin Jason Harvey has posted a technical analysis on the bills and why their provisions are both insufficient and too broad in scope.

SOPA and PROTECT IP contain no provisions to actually remove copyrighted content, but rather focus on the censorship of links to entire domains.

If the Attorney General served reddit with an order to remove links to a domain, we would be required to scrub every post and comment on the site containing the domain and censor the links out, even if the specific link contained no infringing content. We would also need to implement a system to automatically censor the domain from any future posts or comments. This places a measurable burden upon the site’s technical infrastructure. It also damages one of the most important tenets of reddit, and the internet as a whole – free and open discussion about whatever the fuck you want.

Numerous websites across the internet — notably Wikipedia and reddit — have gone dark today in protest. The terrifying reality is that if a bill like SOPA gets passed into law, its ambiguous language could allow malevolent parties to abuse its powers and ultimately force such pages offline and their owners out of business.

I am not an American. I do not profess to be on the frontline should this bill pass and start wreaking havoc as it appears destined to do. It would be naive, however, to suggest that as a Canadian the ripple effect would not reach my country very quickly. Many major players on the web are vulnerable to this legislation. Sites that rely on user-generated content are especially at-risk: Twitter and Facebook come to mind, and both have been very public in their opposition to SOPA, specifically. Google, as a link aggregator, could be held liable if an offending link appears in its search results. What does Lamar Smith (SOPA is his brainchild) propose to do in such a scenario? Take Google offline? Even if it were able to successfully delist offending links immediately, the whack-a-mole principle is always in play on the internet: take one site down and ten more will spring forth to replace it forthwith. An unintended, although not as hotly discussed, consequence could be that these American companies (all of which serve a global market) take their business to another country with less tyrannical laws regarding online content. Such moves could irreparably damage the American economy and send the country back on a downward spiral toward a full-blown recession. Admittedly that’s a little bit of a leap in logic, but if your company was forced to decide between bankrupting itself to abide by the law (or shutting down its business entirely if its model can’t be “fixed”) and moving, the ones with enough money will choose the second option.

Moreover, Quacked is a site that, while based on almost entirely original content, also employs limited, editorial use of copyrighted materials (the pictures you see atop every article). Granted that’s always been right on the line of fair use, but to-date I have not received a single takedown request or cease-and-desist order. SOPA or PROTECT IP would both grant an accuser (e.g. Getty Images) privilege to file a complaint with our web host, who would then be bound to remove our site because it’s easier and quicker than trying to work out the differences if there is a threat of litigation hanging over the situation. One complaint over a single image on this blog could bring the entire domain offline before I would get my day in court, not that it would likely arrive because we do not have a team of lawyers to fight such battles.

Mind you, all of this is being wrapped in the American flag and being presented as a measure of security against “foreigners” who seek only to profit off the hard work of upstanding American citizens — or at least the ones who make enough money to influence federal policy. To say nothing of the fact that the U.S. government is funding the development of tools to help the residents in other countries living under “repressive regimes” circumvent such measures, passing these bills into law would rank among the highest of hypocrisy offenses and obviate any discussion of the United States occupying any sort of moral high ground. After all, why worry about censorship in other countries when your primary focus is on stopping the scourge of copyright infringement through the same types of tactics in your own backyard?

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. This fight, while important, will not be the last. It is imperative that we do not take what we have for granted; if we do, we risk losing the last bastion of truly free speech. Our rights and freedoms will take a back seat to the interests of corporations that have not been able to develop a cogent business model necessary to survive in the digital age.

That simply cannot be allowed to happen.

When a player scores 50 goals and becomes the NHL MVP, you tend to forget there was a time when he was, in fact, pretty green (and purple — check out those threads!).

It was a scant six or so years back that Corey Perry, wearing a decidedly more conspicuous number 61, made his auspicious debut on an NHL scoresheet, potting a goal for the then-Mighty Ducks against the Edmonton Oilers. Demonstrating a nose for the net that has stood him in good stead with the team and its fans ever since, Perry pounced on a loose puck in the Oilers’ crease to tally his first marker.

As Perry breaks down the play, the words from the original broadcast seem to echo like a prescient refrain:

As goaltenders around this league are going to discover soon, if you gotta give it to somebody on the doorstep, you might not want to give it to Corey Perry.

Perry’s is just one in a series of videos on NHL.com that features players describing their first NHL goal. Also featured are Brad Richards, Logan Couture and Shane Doan.

Holy hangover, Batman! We’re back after ringing in the new year, even if our favorite Orange County team appears to still be feeling the effects of the late-night champagne celebrations.

Right on schedule, 2012′s first big NHL headline is commensurate in both controversy and surprise: the NHLPA has effectively vetoed the NHL’s proposed — and Board of Governors-approved  — plan to institute sweeping changes to the alignment of its teams.

There are several potential reasons why new NHLPA head Donald Fehr chose to mark his as-yet-brief tenure so boldly, but it appears the major sticking point was the NHL’s unilateral development of the restructuring. Greg Wyshynski of Puck Daddy has a few theories about why the NHLPA felt the chasm in opinion was simply too big to bridge.

The unbalanced conference format, with two divisions of eight teams and two divisions of seven teams. Combined with the return to a four-team “divisional” playoff format, the players felt there was an unfair advantage to teams in the smaller conferences.

For its part, the league feels that the players’ association is overstepping its bounds and in doing so has brought ruin to its carefully crafted scheme. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly weighs in:

“It is unfortunate that the NHLPA has unreasonably refused to approve a Plan that an overwhelming majority of our Clubs voted to support, and that has received such widespread support from our fans and other members of the hockey community, including Players[...]”

“We believe the Union acted unreasonably in violation of the League’s rights.  We intend to evaluate all of our available legal options and to pursue adequate remedies, as appropriate.”

As this story develops, we will no doubt hear from all sides involved, including the teams who stood to benefit from a revised travel schedule.

What this means for the future of divisional alignment in the NHL or the looming labor negotiations between the league and players’ association is unclear, but the sense of foreboding is strong.

Good thing we pushed that feature on realignment out the door before 2011 concluded, isn’t it?