It really is...and anyone who buys into this "rivalry" is imagining things.
Honestly, I don't know if the Kings truly have a rival. I know as players there is no love lost between them and the Canucks and Blues, for example, but I haven't seen a rivalry between the Kings and anyone since the Kings and Oilers in the '80s and '90s.
I remember one game in particular when about a dozen fights broke out with literally 0:01 to go in the game...can't remember the year off-hand, but it was historic in that the game (up until that point in time) had the most penalty minutes in the history of the league.
Time to go and research it and see if I can find it...and see if that record has been broken yet.
I think it was opening night sometime in the early 80's. My son and I went and the 3rd period lasted so long we got to see the last 5minutes of the game on the Prime Ticket replay after the game, and it was an hour drive home! Good times!
I like everything about what's wrong with the Ducks.
I like how we still finished above them. That was one of our worst seasons ever. The worst of the 2000s.
My funniest moment with a Ducks fan was in my 2nd year of college. I was wearing a Kings jersey to class, and we were waiting outside...just playfully having some banter about it.
After ribbing with her some more. She:
Thought the Kings had won a few cups
Didn't know any Ducks players outside of Perry-Getzlaf-Selanne-Hiller
and then she said the unthinkable
Brian Hayward is one of the best broadcasters in the game.
I cut her throat with a pen the moment those words came out of her mouth.
Scott Niedermayer, that's what's wrong with the Ducks. You cannot replace HOF players, you can try but it will never be the same. Once Teemu retires this is a team that will struggle to make the playoffs for years. Sure, they have a great top line-but that's all they have. When the team won they had a great 3rd line, maybe the best in the league. And I think you have to put a lot of the blame on the scouting department. They got real lucky Fowler slipped but what's the deal with this team and not developing defensemen? And they seem to be developing a lot of bottom 6 players which is what the Kings did for years after Gretzky left.
Wow. Looking back at those attendance figures. Teams like Chicago, Boston, and Washington were all amongst the worst in the league.
Yea it's crazy to me that those franchises have had to pretty much build fanbases with teams from a haggard group of people who were tired of bad teams and mediocrity ya know?
Ducks fans should be so thankful and lucky. They should be filling Honda every night.
This team has had like 3 finals appearances and a cup...and jesus how many playoff teams in their short history?
that's just it. to date the rivalry exists more between the fans than the teams/players themselves. for some, myself included, i *** hate them. right up there with DET, VAN and SJ. to the point that i hate them more than the other three. well maybe not as bad as VAN. ANH and VAN i can't stand. the teams and their fans are arrogant ****** the whole lot of them.
i grew up in Fullerton and played in Anaheim. i was already a firmly rooted Kings fan when they came into the league. to be that close and have to hear, put up with the bs always made and still makes my blood boil. going to games at the Pond and having to tolerate 3 hours of some snot nosed kid blowing on the duck calls they used to sell drove me insane. sitting there for 3 hours and having to listen to a duck fan spewing their knowledge drove me insane.
having friends from OC that would watch and loosely follow the Kings, only to switch to following the ducks because of proximity pisses me off. in college we had a small group of 4 of us that watched every Kings game at Spoons. the year of the cup run by the end we had on average 30+ for every game. they loved it, they couldn't get enough of it. then the Kings went in the ******* for a decade and Disney decided to put together a team so it could sell more merchandise down the 57. all those casual fans disappeared in a heartbeat.
what really pisses me off though is hearing the one and only thing the ducks fan can spout off on "yeah but we won the Cup"....makes me want to pull their throat out with my bare hands. most of them are all casual fans and don't follow the team day to day, but man do they love to throw this line out at Kings fans. knowing full well it makes our blood boil.
it's similar to the NYR-NYI rivalry. they have faced each other iirc 5 times in the playoffs, which adds fuel to the fire. what is common though to the LA-anh rivalry is proximity, same division/conference, intermixed fans and a shared media market. also similar is a long standing team with lack of success and a newcomer that has won the big prize during this time. isles fans used to rub their four SC's in the noses of the rangers fans. they used to chant 1940 religiously to piss off the rangers and their fans.
personally i think you put something like this in the Kings board you should expect to get beat up verbally for it.
personally i dont think there is anything wrong with the fukcs....they are just where i want them. in last place and in the rear view mirror of the Kings
Actually, my question was NOT "WhiskyPete, can you please tell us all how much you hate the Ducks?" But rather "What is wrong with the Ducks?"
But thanks anyway. It was very entertaining reading.
Don't like the idea of the Ducks collecting more lottery picks with the caliber players they have already locked up on their roster. They need to do better to get poorer pick, hopefully this time around there won't be any Fowler's gift wrapped to them either.
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"It has not been a good day. I lost my glasses early this morning and I had to go buy a pair of 79 dollar reading glasses today. 79 bucks. You can literally get them at Costco, three-for-20." - Darryl Sutter's response to going up 2-0 in the series.
Wow. Looking back at those attendance figures. Teams like Chicago, Boston, and Washington were all amongst the worst in the league.
Went to a game in Chicago back when Jordan owned the town and was able to walk up to the ticket window and buy a single seat in what was essentially the PR section for around $60.
Great place to watch a game and a good group of fans to talk hockey with. Glad they are back near the top of the NHL.
If we seriously land a top 5 pick I can see Anaheim being a very desirable destination for some of the FA. It's well known most people who come out and play in the SoCal area generally fall in love with it for starters because they are able to maintain there daily lives and enjoy the great weather for starters. Secondly regardless of how bad we play the core of our team is still young and has a lot of attractive players to play with. Getz, Perry, Ryan, Fowler, Sbisa + Top 5 pick and some of our upper echelon prospects. One would assume this team is destined for great things in the near future and just is having one bad season. IMO don't be shocked if we can land one of the premier guys this upcoming off season.
Fingers crossed!
Saw this on the Ducks' board and thought it was worth putting up here.
Your team wins the cup and the fans don't even show up the year it happens.
The year after it happens. You're 15th. Go go Anaheim Ducks fans!
For a stat like this, it's always a good idea to look at the ENTIRE chart before jumping to conclusions.
In general, it's difficult to sell tickets for seats that you don't have - if the capacity of your venue is 18,000 and you sell every ticket, does that mean fans didn't show up compared to another team that has a venue that seats 21,000, but only had an average of 18,500 in attendance? Toronto is always in the top 5, but if they had a big enough venue, they could probably sell double the tickets they do now.
The much more accurate way to gauge attendance is to sort that chart by home attendance percentage. That gives you a much more accurate representation of the true fan interest. You'll notice that some teams are over 100% Some venues allow standing room tickets - some cities specifically prohibit them. Some teams count luxury box tickets in addition to the general seating, but don't count those seats in the announced capacity (the Kings do it that way).
Using the percentage of seats rather than just the total number of tickets sold paints a different picture. On the season you linked, the Ducks were 17th at 95.4% while the Kings were 19th at 91.1% - that was their Cup winning season. In the 2007/8 season, the Ducks were 5th at 102.6% while the Kings were 18th at 92%.
For a stat like this, it's always a good idea to look at the ENTIRE chart before jumping to conclusions.
In general, it's difficult to sell tickets for seats that you don't have - if the capacity of your venue is 18,000 and you sell every ticket, does that mean fans didn't show up compared to another team that has a venue that seats 21,000, but only had an average of 18,500 in attendance? Toronto is always in the top 5, but if they had a big enough venue, they could probably sell double the tickets they do now.
The much more accurate way to gauge attendance is to sort that chart by home attendance percentage. That gives you a much more accurate representation of the true fan interest. You'll notice that some teams are over 100% Some venues allow standing room tickets - some cities specifically prohibit them. Some teams count luxury box tickets in addition to the general seating, but don't count those seats in the announced capacity (the Kings do it that way).
Using the percentage of seats rather than just the total number of tickets sold paints a different picture. On the season you linked, the Ducks were 17th at 95.4% while the Kings were 19th at 91.1% - that was their Cup winning season. In the 2007/8 season, the Ducks were 5th at 102.6% while the Kings were 18th at 92%.
My point is, and was, that this is a really easy hockey team to be a fan of. In the last 10 years they have been in the playoffs 6 times.
In those 6 times, they won the Stanley Cup, Lost in the SC finals in 7 games, and made it to the Conference finals.
This is a successful team in a city with no sports teams except the Angels to follow.
There is understandably fluctuation in our attendance given the lack of success this team has had over the last 10 years.
Anaheim has had a TON of success in the last 10 years and they still can't fill the seats? How are they not selling out games?
Look at the list again - the traditional hockey cities (Montreal, Toronto, Western Canadian teams, Minnesota) and the franchises of the Northeast(Rangers, Detroit, Buffalo, Philly, Pittsburgh, etc) don't seem to have trouble selling out regardless of how the team is doing. With the Southern teams, it's always been a case of "what have you done for me lately?". The rise and fall of Ducks attendance based on their performance really isn't any different that what you saw with Carolina or Tampa Bay after their Cup wins - hot ticket the next season, much cooler the next, and nada after that.
... although I'm not clear why attendance is important to you.
The Ducks have 1 line. The second line has two Fin's who are over 37 years old and Cogliano....they don't have a 3rd line like they had back in the day of Moen-Pahlson-Niedermayer.
The defense went from being Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, Sean O'Donnell, and Francois Beauchemin to Toni Lydman, Luca Sbisa, Cam Fowler, Francois Beauchemin (now 4 years older), and an injured Visnovsky.
Their biggest issues were mostly how much good luck they had last year, and having a good power play, especially at the right time. 5 on 5 they were not good. You can't string that kind of luck together two years in a row.
Wow. Looking back at those attendance figures. Teams like Chicago, Boston, and Washington were all amongst the worst in the league.
It's amazing how those teams suddenly became powerhouses (winning the Cup or the President's Trophy in a hurry). Meanwhile, we Kings fans are always stuck with mediocrity. 46-win, 100pt, 6th-8th seed finishes are considered great for us. We can't even win a division title.
