Oddly, Ducks cross the pond

LONDON -- “No Naps Tonight,” blared the order in blue ink on the white board in the Ducks’ dressing room at the O2 Arena.

And so backup goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov wondered aloud, “No naps?”

And so a trainer explained the savvy sleep policy whenever flying eight time zones eastward: Adopt the locals’ sleep schedule as rapidly as possible.

And so the Stanley Cup champions had arrived for their season opener in a country where a passerby saw their Stanley Cup and surmised it might be the Carling Cup, England’s third-most-coveted domestic soccer hardware.

Reporter: “When you guys agreed to this. . . “

Chris Pronger, grinning: “You mean we agreed to it?”

Reporter: “I thought there was a player vote.”

Pronger, grinning more: “Sure, there was.”

But then: “To start to try to blame travel and things like that, pretty weak,” Pronger said.

The Ducks open their repeat bid 5,454 miles from Anaheim with two weekend tilts against the Kings, three ensuing games in the Eastern end of America, and one apparent motto.

“It’s the hand we’re dealt,” Coach Randy Carlyle said, adding that coaches never like scheduling.

As for the Kings, they defeated Farjestad Karlstad, 4-3 ,in the finals of an exhibition tournament in Austria and immediately began looking toward the London games. The team is due to arrive today.

Meanwhile, at midday, East London, near the Canary Wharf business district, the Ducks skated on ice Pronger called “a work in progress,” then answered questions about David Beckham.

“I’m not as good-looking as David Beckham,” Pronger said.

If the whole thing seemed surreal, the Ducks will always have London for at least one durable memory. It’s the place they first saw their names etched into the Stanley Cup.

The weary trophy appeared in the sunny-cold wind on a small table beside the door of a red double-decker bus beside the arena and within view of the David Beckham Academy, which teaches children how to kick soccer balls that bend mystically. The Ducks lowered their heads and squinted to find their names. Goaltender Jean-Sebastian Giguere held his little digital camera right up next to the cup.

Next, the Ducks boarded the bus for a tour of London, during which the expert guide supplied such morsels as, “If you look to the left, this is where ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ was filmed,” and, explaining the historic Tower Bridge fate of convicted traitors, “When you had your head cut off, it was boiled slowly, then put into tar, and basically left up there until it totally rotted. The birds would come down and peck the eyes.”

Ducks center Ryan Getzlaf hauled out the Stanley Cup for a photo op in front of the Tower Bridge with 17 Ducks, and later right winger Corey Perry carried it to a vantage point in front of Big Ben, stopping to pose with it beside one of those red phone booths to the puzzlement of a delivery driver making rounds.

“Are they football, soccer?” a tourist asked.

As title-defending openings go, it’s up there with the strangest.