Minutes were still left to be played but Game 5 had already become a celebration. The standing-room-only crowd that had Honda Center bursting at the seams sensed the moment was at hand and rose to its feet as one.
The Stanley Cup was going to be in the hands of the Ducks. Those fortunate enough to be inside erupted into the longest and most sustained amount of boisterous and joyous noise. On June 6, 2007, the final game was playing out exactly as the team and its fans had hoped.
A 6-2 rout of the overmatched Ottawa Senators allowed for everyone to bask in the revelry. And those who had been battling on the ice for years, whether with the Ducks or other teams, to have that moment – the one they dreamed of as kids – couldn’t wait for those final minutes to elapse.
Take Rob Niedermayer. A top-five draft pick who carved out his niche as a defensive forward, Niedermayer was on the losing end of a sad handshake and embrace with his older brother, Scott, four years earlier as Rob’s Mighty Ducks fell to the New Jersey Devils in Game 7.
The complete about-face was now going to happen. The Niedermayer boys were teammates. They were about to win hockey’s – some would even argue sport’s – most hallowed trophy together.
“You’re just waiting for those seconds to end,” Rob Niedermayer said, reminiscing with each word uttered. “And then when they do, that flood of emotion just hits you. The NHL playoffs are one of the hardest things to go through.
“You look at those pictures, there’s nothing left. I was skin and bones. You’re broken. All that emotion just poured right out. You can’t describe that.”
Ten years have passed since the Ducks made history. They were the first of the NHL’s California-based teams to win the Stanley Cup and the first from the North American west coast since the Victoria Cougars defeated the Montreal Canadiens in 1925. Consider that Victoria was part of the Western Canada Hockey League, with the Cup not being seen as the NHL championship trophy until 1926.
And the run itself to that epochal late spring Wednesday night lives on. The Ducks went 16-5 in the playoffs. They never needed to play a series-deciding Game 7.
But the road to their Game 5 coronation started long before that. Long before Teemu Selanne’s definitive, pivotal overtime goal in the Western Conference finals against Detroit. Long before their record-setting blitz to open the 2006-07 regular season. Long before that training camp opened.
Building a champion
Take Brian Burke. To the longtime NHL general manager, that road began at the start of his tenure with the Ducks by fulfilling Scott Niedermayer’s wish to play with his younger sibling by signing the Norris Trophy-winning defenseman as a free agent.
But it was the trade for another superstar defender in Chris Pronger that became the highway toward a title. With a newly shortened nickname, the Ducks had two eventual members of the Hockey Hall of Fame on a mighty team that had recently finished a run to the Western Conference finals.
Now the Calgary Flames president, Burke said he met with his staff soon afterward and first determined if they were a legitimate Cup contender before figuring out what was missing.
“They’re like, ‘We need another elite defenseman,’” Burke said. “The guy we want is Chris Pronger. I’m like, ‘That should be easy, no one else wants him.’ So we overpaid. [Then-Edmonton GM] Kevin Lowe drove a hard bargain.
“We gave up Joffey Lupul, who had been our best forward in the playoffs. Ladi Smid, who was a top young prospect. And a first-round pick, plus an insurance first. But, to me, you can never overpay if you have a parade. There’s no debate. We felt that made us a legitimate contender. And it did.”
The players felt that way immediately. Teemu Selanne, who had been a fierce rival of Pronger’s, was so stunned with Burke’s acquisition that he immediately thought the Ducks had reacquired Chris’s brother, Sean. Soon, the franchise face was among many who seriously talked about winning the Cup.
The Ducks heartily embraced the topic well before training camp opened.
“When that trade went down, we thought, ‘That’s it,’” said Sean O’Donnell, Pronger’s defense partner on the Ducks. “We really thought we had the piece. [Niedermayer] and Pronger, arguably the team two best defensemen in the NHL, and we had them both on our team. And we just felt it was Stanley Cup or bust.
“A lot of teams say that they believe they can win the Stanley Cup. We knew going into that first day. Teemu was back. We had all the players for the most part, plus we added Pronger. We felt we could do it.”
And the Ducks’ brash, tough-talking GM didn’t tell his players to cool it on the Cup discussion.
“It’s clear the focus was there, that we were a legitimate contender,” Burke said. “And there’s a sense that you never know how many chances you get. When you’re a young player, you think, ‘Oh, this will happen again.’ This is my 30th year in pro hockey. I got one ring.
“So there’s a sense that we got the pieces, let’s not waste this. We had really good veterans. Todd Marchant was an important part of that team. Beauch (Francois Beauchemin). We had really good veterans that had spent their time and had never gotten a sniff. They’re like, ‘Let’s not screw this up guys.’ So it was special right from the start.”
The bold talk, O’Donnell said, wasn’t about being cocky. It was about being supremely confident.
“We knew we were a legitimate team and we didn’t want to hide from that,” O’Donnell said. “We didn’t want to sneak up on anybody. We felt, ‘Bring your best and we still think we’re better.’ So we didn’t mind.”
Loaded and deep
Talent filled that roster. Pronger and Niedermayer were the anchors on the back end, but the Ducks had a potent offensive line headed by Selanne and his 48-goal, 94-point season at age 36. The playmaking Andy McDonald and grinding Chris Kunitz were perfect speedy complements.
An emerging young scoring trio of Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Dustin Penner added power and touch at the net. And when the playoffs began, it was the shutdown group of Samuel Pahlsson, Travis Moen and Rob Niedermayer that was often their driving force.
Scott Niedermayer was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the playoffs’ most valuable player. But on a balanced Ducks team that featured nine players as double-digit scorers that postseason, there was plenty of sentiment toward defensive standout Pahlsson as a worthy winner – if not his linemates.
“I know Scotty won the Conn Smythe and well-deserved,” said Brad May, a fourth-line agitator on that squad. “There’s so many guys could have been in that role and would certainly get that trophy. For me, though, I think the three of them could collectively share of it and not take anything away from Scotty.”
The Ducks also had a full complement of role players young and older that helped sustain a deep team through the 82-game grind and their dominating playoff run. Some would have their individual moments.
Take Joe DiPenta and Ric Jackman. The journeymen had three goals between them in 2006-07. But they were the only Ducks scorers in a March win over Phoenix while Pronger was sidelined with a broken toe. And the two saved their biggest impact in two more notable games Pronger missed.
Illegal head hits to Detroit’s Tomas Holmstrom and Ottawa’s Dean McAmmond resulted in suspensions for Pronger in Game 4 of the final two rounds. Jackman would score his only Stanley Cup playoff goal in a 5-3 win over the Red Wings to tie the West finals. And DiPenta, a lineup regular who was scratched in the Cup Final, would have what he called “the biggest defining moment of my career.”
“Game 4 to me was an opportunity to help the team,” DiPenta said. “Get back in. I was excited. It was my first Stanley Cup Final game and, while I didn’t focus on it, subconsciously I had this feeling that I was helping Chris, who I Iooked up to.
“That ended up being probably the best game I ever played in my life. If I hadn’t been out of the lineup and kind of been down and out, I never would have been able to contribute to the team in that way. Otherwise it would have been another game.”
Imposing their will
Bullish and often brutish, the Ducks tore out to a 12-0-4 record that set an NHL record for most games with a point to begin a season until Chicago topped that six years later. They would push that torrid start to 27-4-6 before settling for then-team records of 48 wins and 110 points.
And they fought for their space on the ice. A league-leading 1,427 penalty minutes were compiled largely because no other team was close to their 71 fighting major penalties. Fan favorite George Parros personified their attitude but Moen and Shawn Thornton were regular pugilists. Players throughout the roster initiated physical play instead of shirking away from it.
In Thornton’s eyes, they “were the biggest, baddest team in the league that year” and didn’t apologize for instilling fear and intimidation.
“I just know in speaking to guys around the league from that year, we were going into the building and they’d be looking at our lineup and guys who were tough and not tough, going, ‘Oh my God, what happens if this happens or that happens,” Thornton said. “It wasn’t just Parros or O’Donnell or May Day (Brad May). Travis Moen.
“I think that was definitely an edge that we had on a lot of teams. And Burkie liked it that way.”
The Ducks’ eagerness to drop the gloves and play on the edge often brought criticism beyond their universe, a team often recalling Philadelphia’s beloved and hated Broad Street Bullies of the 1970s. But they didn’t care what others thought.
“We were an exciting team to watch,” Pronger said. “We could play any style. We could play tough, we could play finesse. We could play offensive, we could play defense. I think that was the special part of the team was being able to flow from one style to the next and not skip a beat.”
‘A special group’
Ranking the greatest teams in NHL history, The Hockey News placed the 2007 Cup champions 18th. A fan vote conducted by NHL.com had them making the first cut among the 96 Stanley Cup champions. Burke insists none of the titlists since could beat the squad he put the finishing touches on.
“A lot of times, you realize the bigger picture later,” Selanne said. “I think we knew we had a great team and we knew it was one of the best teams. But now when you look back, you even think more like that. We didn’t really have any weakness in the group.
“Everybody had the same mission. We all know this was going to be the chance, the only chance most of us was ever going to get.”
At that moment, the Ducks had everything lined up and made the most of that chance. Rob Niedermayer savored it then and does now, as have Selanne and O’Donnell and Pronger and Marchant and others that, for years, had always come up short in the Cup chase.
“What a special group we had,” Rob Niedermayer said. “To be honest with you, you’re so focused on winning, you’re almost scared not to think about it. You just don’t know if you’re going to get there. It’s not done until you actually beat that team in the last series.
“I think that was something – the fear. I was getting on in my career and I didn’t want that to end. That’s what drove you and that’s what focused you.”
Ten years ago, those Ducks set the standard. Ten years later, they remain that.
