Local Fans Getting Mighty Spoiled

I wrote a column about hockey several years ago, and it so irritated a reader that he canceled his subscription to the paper. Talk about a tough audience. Somehow, he got the impression that I knew nothing about hockey.

The guy was a 30-year subscriber, so I phoned him and said he couldn’t cancel over one silly column. We talked a little puck, I name-dropped Eric Nesterenko and Yvan Cournoyer, and he changed his mind and signed up again.

Ah, the passion of the sports fan. It’s both a beautiful and nutty thing to observe. But there’s no denying its existence. Let’s just say no one has ever threatened to cancel the paper because of anything I’ve written about the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

We locals thought we had survived all the shortness of breath we could handle last October, when the Angels capped what was an already good season by -- get this -- winning the World Series.

Now come the Mighty Ducks.

Uh, that’s the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, for those of you who don’t know.

If you thought the Angels surprised the sports world by winning the Series, imagine what’ll happen to the Earth’s axis if the Ducks win the Stanley Cup. To hockey purists, mentioning Mighty Ducks and Stanley Cup in the same sentence would have been sacrilege -- until the Ducks completed a first-round playoff sweep Wednesday of the defending-champion Detroit Red Wings.

This is right up there with the Angels knocking off the Yankees in the first round of playoffs last October.

It’s deja vu on ice.

Anaheim: Title Town USA.

How many bandwagons can a person hop on in a year’s time?

Bandwagon-hopping, however, will require late-night cramming by new hockey fans. Just as Angels strangers had to acquaint themselves with names like Eckstein, Spiezio and Percival, new Ducks converts will learn that Vitaly Vishnevski, Sandis Ozolinsh and Marc Chouinard are the names of Ducks players and not the identities of the last three secretary generals of the United Nations.

Like the Angels, the Ducks are a franchise not known for doing much of anything. Their name alone made them laughingstocks in a sport that prided itself on tradition and missing teeth. It was embarrassing to be slammed into the boards by someone wearing a quacking Duck logo.

Like the Angels over the years, the Ducks certainly had some star power. Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne were bright lights in the league. But Selanne was traded in 2001, and Kariya, still in his prime, started looking like he’d be the Ducks’ version of Tim Salmon -- a franchise star and good guy who never would drink championship champagne unless he slipped into another team’s locker room.

True, the Ducks have only been around since 1993 -- so you could hardly call their fans long-suffering. And though Orange County fans got excited in the Ducks’ first year, they didn’t show much staying power. By last season, the Ducks were last in their division and last in the entire league in attendance. And, as with the Angels, Disney ownership was shopping the team for a buyer.

But the Pond was sold out and rocking Wednesday night -- just like Edison Field last October. And just as in the aftermath of the Angels-Yankees series, local fans can dare to imagine another hometown championship.

Will Orange County warm up to a team that plays indoors, on ice? As April turns to May and beach season nears, will we postpone our barbecues and pool parties and divert our attention to ice escapades? Is it greedy for one town to claim two world champs in one year?

And if not, would the parade be on Katella Avenue again?

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.