Arrowhead Pond - Anaheim Ducks

Trip Notes: The cheapest trip I've taken in awhile. Used a free flight to fly into Santa Ana and stayed at my parents beach house. Spent the majority of the days sitting on the beach and rollerblading or walking down the board walk. It was a nice relaxing vacation. Flew out there with my mom and my step dad came a ocuple days later. Went to 3 hockey games over the 5 days. In addition to the Anaheim game, I went to two ECHL games...the Long Beach Ice Dogs and the San Diego Gulls. The Gulls game was definitely the better of the two, though both were fun.

Arena Notes: Located right off the highway, it was only around a 15 minute drive from Newport Beach. Didn't see much other than hotels in the near vicinity of the airport, but I may have missed it. The arena was nice. Maybe 3/4 of the arena was full. Lots of Ducks jerseys, but also saw quite a few Kings jerseys. Sat top level in the corner. I had problems seeing around the guy in front of me since he leaned forward thoughout the game. Fortunately no one was sitting next to me so I was able to move over. Other than that, the seat was good. The game went to a shootout so I was happy with that. The Pond opened its doors in 1993 and has a seat capacity of 17,174 for hockey fans. Their mascot is Wild Wing a duck. Their are no retired numbers for the Ducks, only the league wide #99 Wayne Gretzky.

Game Notes: Teemu Selanne's gunslinger antics in the shootout were a lot funnier to the Minnesota Wild once they had dispatched the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.
Randy Robitaille netted the deciding goal in the tiebreaker after his team blew a two-goal lead, Mikko Koivu scored his first NHL goal and Stephane Veilleux recorded his first of the season to lead the Wild to a 4-3 victory over the Mighty Ducks on Sunday night.
The shootout started well for the Ducks when Selanne beat Manny Fernandez to the glove side and then stuffed his stick into an imaginary holster on his left hip. But Koivu beat Jean-Sebastien Giguere high to the glove side with Minnesota's second shot, and Robitaille connected after Fernandez denied Andy McDonald and rookie Ryan Getzlaf.
Minnesota's Brian Rolston, who scored a shorthanded goal in the first period, had no problem with Selanne's theatrics.
"I think it's great, even though it was against us," Rolston said. "I hope guys start throwing their gloves up in the air and shooting them out of the sky, to sell the game more. I mean, when you give back 12 percent escrow, you want to help the game grow."
Getzlaf scored consecutive goals in the second period to erase Anaheim's 3-1 deficit, and Zenon Konopka recorded his first NHL goal. Giguere, who shut out Minnesota three times in the 2003 Western Conference finals, made 18 saves. Six of Anaheim's nine losses have been by one goal.
Getzlaf got the puck from Selanne in the high slot after a turnover and beat Fernandez with a slap shot at 8:01 of the second. About 6½ minutes later, Minnesota was penalized for having too many men on the ice and the Ducks capitalized on the ensuing power play.
Minnesota, the NHL's top penalty-killing team, opened the scoring with their second short-handed goal. Rolston took a two-line pass from Pascal Dupuis and went in on a breakaway.
"I knew [Petr] Sykora got caught flatfooted and I knew I had him beat, as long as the pass got through to me," Rolston said. "Pascal made a great pass to me and I had all day."
The Wild killed off eight of nine Anaheim power plays, after thwarting all eight by the Sharks the previous night. Minnesota was shorthanded eight times over the first two periods and was outshot 17-4 in the second during the Ducks' three-goal rally.
"When you kill that many penalties two periods in a row, the second period felt like eight. That's why they had so many shots," said Minnesota's Wes Walz, who logged more than six minutes of ice time on the penalty kill. "It mentally wears you out and drains you. The skill guys then have to sit on the bench for 15 to 20 minutes, and it's hard to do that and then dig in when you need a goal."
Koivu, the brother of Montreal Canadiens captain Saku Koivu, made it 2-0 at 17:35 of the first period. He made his NHL debut Saturday in Minnesota's 3-1 win at San Jose after missing five weeks with a strained left knee.
Konopka cut Minnesota's lead in half at 2:08 of the second, just eight seconds after he finished serving an interference penalty.
But Veilleux restored Minnesota's two-goal margin less than three minutes later, 14 seconds after Minnesota killed off a penalty.
"It was kind of a broken play," Walz said. "I originally was going to try to drive their defenseman wide, and he overplayed me a little bit, so I just kind of left the puck sitting there for Stephane so he could walk into it. It was nice to get him a goal."
Anaheim left winger Trevor Gillies made an inauspicious NHL debut after being called up from AHL Portland on Saturday because of enforcer Kip Brennan's shoulder injury. He received a hooking penalty less than 4½ minutes in and then got a misconduct at 10:27 of the first period for instigating a fight with Derek Boogaard -- who ended it quickly with a right uppercut to Gillies' jaw.
More Game notes: Los Angeles Times hockey columnist Helene Elliott, who has covered the NHL in Southern California since 1994-95, will receive the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award at the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday in Toronto. ... Gillies, who totaled 780 penalty minutes in 156 career AHL games, received 21 penalty minutes. ... Getzlaf was picked No. 19 in the 2003 draft. ... Anaheim outshot Minnesota 42-21. ... Selanne's two assists gave him 18 points in Anaheim's first 16 games.
(*Game notes taken from espn.com*)