Ducks take the Ice...and Win!!

The 1992 blockbuster, Mighty Ducks, was my first PG movie. I know, MAJOR milestone.
Almost two decades later, I have ventured to my first hockey game, the Anaheim Ducks vs. the Dallas Stars at the Honda Center in Anaheim. I come apprehensive (how much fun can it be watching guys shuffle across ice? Answer: Umm, TONS of fun! ) and leave a HUGE fan.
Obviously, much of Orange County is as well. The folks filling the stands around my husband, Scott, and I come from all over the county: Anaheim, Laguna Niguel, San Juan Capistrano. There are even folks from LA and Riverside who’ve made the rush-hour trek to scream their lungs out at guys ramming each other into the quivering plexi-glass. The Honda Center is pulsating with life.

That vibrating plexi-glass is closer that I am comfortable with in the fourth row, but it also gives great view of the action. The game is intense, and the crowd even more so. They yell encouragement to the Ducks by name, cheer when a Star gets jolted against the glass, and jeer at the opposing goalie. I have to admit real-life hockey is more nail biting than the movie version.
Besides the on-ice action, awesome rock music and flashy scoreboard, the Honda Center keeps me fully entertained with a host of crowd pleasers, including a Crowd Kiss Camera, a Sheep Blimp that circles overhead, a Free-Taco game that I don’t quite get the rules to, and my favorite--audience members dressed in hockey puck costumes, racing around the ice. Oh, and of course there is beer, peanuts and hot dogs.

For further (mostly male) entertainment, there are “Ducks Girls” who scrape the ice in sports tops during the breaks to almost as much applause as when the Ducks win (and I bite off my pinky finger nail with anxiety) the game in a sudden death overtime. The final score is 4-3, Ducks. My final verdict on the Anaheim Ducks: When can we go again?