Hey there, I'm Steven Reeves - although just "Steven" or "Wildwing64" will do - and welcome to Across The Pond... no, don't misread that as "Across the road from The Pond". Although that would make my life as a fan a million times easier.
In case the picture of Great Britain and the team coloured Union Jack in the header weren't big enough giveaways: yes, I am in fact a hockey fan - and more importantly an Anaheim Ducks fan - who hails from the United Kingdom. Or more specifically, England. You know, the land that takes great pride in inventing lots of things but then heavily neglects them while other countries cherish them and nurture them like they were their own children. Ice Hockey is one of these such things, invented in Canada by British soldiers. And while we do have our own leagues here the sport still barely registers on anyone's radar as the sporting coverage over here is almost exclusively dominated by Football, followed by Cricket, occasionally Rugby, the Olympics... oh, and frickin' Darts and Snooker too. And yeah, that's the version of Football that you guys in America and Canada call "Soccer", a word that my fellow Brits hate with a vengeance. Even though, like many things, we invented that word in the first place!
And for the record, yes, I do play hockey. But only in videogame form. I would love to learn to play ice hockey for real, but in this country and at my age, learning to play the Coolest Game on Earth™ is about as accessible as a safe with a needlessly complicated locking system that's also being guarded by a hungry bear. I'll probably see the Devil skating to work before an ice hockey program for anyone above the age of 7 is ever made available in the United Kingdom.
I suppose the first question that you want answered would be how I became a fan of hockey in the first place, considering it's always on life support here. Or maybe before that you want to know how the hell I ended up becoming a fan of the Anaheim Ducks, which is not only "that team named after a Disney movie" but is also one of the furthest away from where I live, at least 5,450 miles from my house. You either did or you didn't ask for it, but here is my hockey fan story anyway:
Basically, when I was little I was more of a Power Rangers, Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog kid. I wasn't raised into
Then, I heard a duck calling me.
I remember one morning I saw an advert on TV for a cartoon about humanoid, hockey playing ducks from outer space. Said commercial mainly showed off the main cast and a giant duck shaped hockey mask floating through space. And for some reason "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" was the song set to this commercial. Either way, this got me interested. This was more than something I would simply watch for the purpose of waiting for Power Rangers to start already. This show was awesome, and somewhere in the back of my mind, it made me like hockey. Oh, and I found out years later that two of the writers of this series have the surname Reeves-Stevens. I don't know if that's a really awesome or a really creepy coincidence.
This TV show disappeared after a little while but it still left a permanent mark on me. Fast forward five years later to 2002 and that duck was calling me again. I was trying to remember what the name of that cartoon was. And what a funny coincidence, D2: The Mighty Ducks happened to appear on TV around that time. I did wonder what this had to do with the superhero hockey playing ducks from outer space I was more accustomed to, but it had Ice Hockey so it kept me interested anyway. It took a while, but then I finally saw the link I was waiting for: there was that duck shaped hockey mask again. On the front of the team's jerseys, just like in the cartoon, for the climax of the film. The moment that logo appeared, I was dead set on getting myself interested in this game in some shape or form. However I did wonder at the time if I'd ever see the duck mask again.
Early 2003 I finally gave in and picked up NHL Hitz 20-02 for the GameCube. I remember loading the game up and wondering what team I would end up playing as the most. Red is my favourite colour, so I was probably gonna go for a team that was red. But then the first thing that caught my attention as the game loaded up with a boot screen featuring all thirty NHL team logos...
There it was again. The Mighty Ducks were in this game.
At the time I laughed, but it was more in disbelief than anything else. It was almost as if this logo was following me around now. But yes, it was from this videogame that I learned the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim were a real team. It didn't take long for me to become attached to them, and soon I would begin bleeding Eggplant and Jade and declare myself a diehard. I didn't know much about the team other than that a bunch of guys named Steve Rucchin, Oleg Tverdovsky and Paul Kariya played for them along with a goalie named Steve Shields. Unlike with Tottenham all those years ago, I was determined not to let this go. And it has pretty much stuck with me ever since.
As with anything you become interested in, naturally I wanted to learn more. Thankfully, we had Internet access, which I used to learn more about this team. I would visit the Mighty Ducks website frequently, and at some point they were in the 2003 playoffs, in the middle of their Cinderella run to their first ever Stanley Cup Finals appearance. What I didn't know at the time was that in 1997, the year I saw the Mighty Ducks cartoon series, the NHL Ducks made their first ever playoff appearance. It's because of all this that part of me has wondered if there is some sort of mystical bond between me and this team.
2003-04 was a bit more difficult for me. Not so much because it was a crap year for the Ducks, but being a new fan of the team I had no idea where to even get started. I had no way of watching them at all, and the one channel I had access to that did broadcast NHL games here in the UK never seemed to show any Mighty Ducks games, needless to say any hockey that was on would have been on in the early hours of the morning anyway so I wouldn't have been able to stay up long enough to watch any. So for the time being I just stuck to NHL Hitz. I later found out about the lockout that cancelled the entire 2004-05 season, further delaying my start to properly following this team. However I did get my first jersey for Christmas 2004 so it wasn't all bad.
Eventually, the 2005-06 season had arrived. And this is where my fandom jump started straight into overdrive. And I have a certain individual by the name of Kent French to thank for it; after every Mighty Ducks home game, an episode of a webcast hosted by the man himself, named Ducks TV, would show highlights of the game, give an inside look at stuff going on with the team (things like postgame player interviews for example) and also show us some footage of the other happenings around the then-named Arrowhead Pond, be it a Human ten pin bowling event that would take place on-ice during intermission, or an eating contest between some fans. Despite living as far away as I do, this was one of those things that made me feel closer to the team. I always looked forward to watching it every other night after I got back home from college, and of course this was my only way of watching Mighty Ducks hockey. Ducks TV doesn't exist in its original format anymore, plus all of the 2005-06 videos are gone which is a shame, but this really helped me pave the way towards becoming a truly full-time Ducks fan.
And speaking of Ducks TV's extensive off-ice coverage, there was a certain other event that it also covered. A press conference that I and the rest of the Mighty Ducks fanbase had anticipated for a few months, which marked the beginning of a new era for the franchise. One that changed the look and feel of the now-named Anaheim Ducks in hopes of distancing themselves from their Disney origins. I understand why they did it, but the team retiring the classic duck mask logo as well as the Eggplant and Jade colour scheme was equivalent to Nintendo replacing Super Mario with a generic Italian chef who happens to simply go by the name of Mario. I felt as if part of my soul had died. The very thing that drew me to this hockey team in the first place and played a part in my life was gone forever. I think what got me down more than anything else was that I would never get the chance to see them play in person, in that uniform.
The new script logo I saw coming a mile off. The old third jersey, which also had a script logo, was very popular among the team's local fanbase (although with this rebrand it's probably more to do with the team trying to market the shortened name more effectively). That and it had been leaked along with another option some time earlier. Initially I didn't like the new colours at all, referring to the whole look as the Flying Penguins of Anaheim. The dramatic rebranding of this franchise took some time for me to get used to. But other than that, the team was still mostly the same: the same players, same arena, same city, and the promise of the "Same Great Hockey" to go along with the new look. They did keep the mascot Wild Wing around which I was pleased to see, but the most important thing of all for me: they were still the Ducks (and regardless, Super Mario does simply go by the name of Mario anyway). It took so long for me to answer the call, and there was no way I was going to turn my back on them now. And I'm glad I stuck around for the ride.
Never did I seriously believe I would get to see the Ducks win a Stanley Cup so soon. Let alone on UK television. Because, y'know, they just happen to be my favourite team. But only a year after I started following them properly and they came *this close* to their second Finals appearance only a year earlier, they went ahead and took the NHL by storm. This was a great time to be a fan of this team. Yeah, it would've been even more awesome if they were still wearing the original uniform with the duck mask logo. But that was only a small chunk of icing that was missing from the best damned cake I've ever eaten.
And earlier on that year, another interesting tidbit of information came up. Something I thought had even less chance of happening than either my favourite team winning the Stanley Cup or my Grandmother winning the lottery. The Anaheim Ducks were coming to England to open the following season. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I did double, triple, and quadruple takes. It's almost as if, they knew, I wouldn't be able to afford to fly overseas to catch a game in Anaheim anytime soon. So they were coming to me instead!
But a list of small problems came up. I was starting University that year and I couldn't afford to go. I had nobody to go with. And if I remember correctly the tickets sold out quite fast, and I think they were mostly snatched up by other European hockey fans who saw this as a once in a lifetime opportunity. In hindsight, part of me regrets not saying "Sod it, I'm going anyway," but chances are I might not have had the best of times there. For starters, they were matched up against the hated Los Angeles Kings. My first Ducks game could very well have been a loss to the bloody Kings. Secondly, at least three key players were out of the lineup: Scott Nidermayer and Teemu Selanne who were still pondering retirement at the time, and legendary goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere was injured. I wouldn't have seen any of those guys at all. Thirdly, being the uniform geek that I am, the Ducks would have disappointed me with their initial Edge jerseys with the teeny tiny wordmark on the front.
Not going to either of the Ducks games in London was something I would lament for a long time afterwards. However as the following years have progressed I've been able to subscribe to services that have allowed me to watch Ducks games over the Internet. It hasn't exactly done any favours for my body clock as I often stay up as late as 3 or even 4am to catch the end of a game. But that doesn't bother me. I can finally watch games on at least a weekly basis. Granted, the online radio feed that the Ducks provided through their website kept me happy before, but now I could actually see the on-ice action too. I felt closer to the team than ever before.
I did eventually get to see an NHL Premiere game in Stockholm, Sweden with a friend. As NHL fans, it seemed silly to sit back as more and more regular season openers took place here in Europe, so to start the 2010-11 season off we went to see the San Jose Sharks play the Columbus Blue Jackets. Granted, the Anaheim Ducks weren't involved (although I did see former Duck Samuel Pahlsson on the ice), but it was still a marvelous experience.
And then what happened after that? The NHL announced that the Ducks were coming to Europe again to open the 2011-12 season. And they were playing a game in Stockholm, where I'd only just been! Had they been tracking my movements or something?! Either way, there was no way in hell that I would let my second chance go. We grabbed our tickets as soon as they were announced. I found out later that Teemu Selanne was coming back for his fifth "One More Year" in a row, and something else that would make the experience special for me was that the Ducks were going to take to the ice in their third jerseys. Why is this significant? Because the classic Mighty Ducks logo makes its glorious return as a pair of shoulder patches on this jersey. That logo was going to be on the ice for my first ever Ducks game. I can only imagine how much I'd have been jumping around the room had I consumed a load of sugar and caffeine beforehand.
Oh, and also I did make a brief visit to the Pond during a trip to Los Angeles last June. I was in the area, and as pretty much a religious devotee to the Ducks, there was no way I was going to miss this chance to see my... well, I can't really call it my "Church" as for obvious reasons I'm unable to attend on a regular basis. I guess it's more like my "Mecca". Spend a good amount of time there, walking around the outside of the building to take photos, spend $370 on a ton of stuff in the team store (I could have had an authentic third jersey instead for just $5 more!), and finally got to meet a childhood hero of mine, Wild Wing, in statue form.
So there we have it. That's pretty much my life story so far as a UK based Anaheim Ducks fan. Next season happens to be a special one for me as it'll be the 10th anniversary of me becoming a fan of this team, so I bring you this blog, to give you the reader something to read from the perspective of a fan who lives halfway across the other side of the world.
Until next time, I'm Steven Reeves, a die-hard Duck from Across The Pond.
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