Wednesday, June 25, 2014

I Love Hockey til the Day I Die -Hockey Hall of Fame

One of the things on our list this trip was to go to the Hockey Hall of Fame. It was suppose to be a little under 2 hours to get there from our campground. Well we didn't die trying to get there but felt like we were a lot older. We were near the border and it was a weekday around 10 in the morning. How long could it take to get through the border. A long time. There were long lines with what looked like mostly Canadians per what license plates we saw. An hour later and just the usual 10 questions we were through. We are use to Western Canada with few towns or people once past the border and.or Vancouver which still is not that crowded. Well, getting to Toronto was like driving through Southern Calif with one large city blending into there. Hurray!!! And we LOVE Hockey and so all worth it.
The Hockey Hall of Fame is both a museum and Hall of Fame. They are many exhibits of the NHL, its players and teams, memorabilia and trophies.



Love the old sweaters worn years ago.


Of course we love seeing anything Ducks. Getzlaf, the Ducks Captain, who had such a great year.

Temmu Selanne, who was shpwn here as a Fan Favorite of the League one year and will always be The Fan Favorite of all die hard Hockey Fans. We will miss you out on the Ice but look forward to see you in this building as an inductee of the Hockey Hall of Fame.



Here is a list of Stanley Cup Winners. We were fortunate to be at Honda Center when the Ducks won the Cup in 2007. One of our greatest memories. They won the Cup after only being in the NHL since 1993. It took the Kings almost 40 years .Yeah, now they have two but watch out. We will catch up soon. Looking at the different teams with their histories noted, it is surprising on some of the teams who have never won the Cup. It is really hard to win.

They had lots of interesting things, such as a replica of a locker room and items sold to fans and lots of different equipment from the early days to current days.





Below is some memorabilia from the 1980 Olympics "Miracle on Ice" Hockey Final where the US beat the Russians.
We watched a 3D film with glasses and all of a Game 7 Stanley Cup game played by a bunch of young kids. It was jpretty cool, especially when the puck comes right at you and lots of ice spray too. A fun ending with aup  special visitor at the end.
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We went into the Trophy Room which includes the first Stanley Cup ever.

The list of the inductees from 2013 includes Scottie Niedermayer, who helped the Ducks win the Stanley Cup and is now one of the assistant coaches. Every year, a group which includes coached and players who pick out the players who have had great careers. Scottie was certainly one of the greats, winning two Cups, Olympic Gold, Norse Trophies for Best Defenseman of the Year among other honors.

 The Hart Trophy with the Ducks Corey Perry was there as well as the Conn Symthe Trophy which the Ducks goalie J.S. Giguere (Jiggy) won in the 2003 when the Ducks almost won their first Cup but lost in game seven of the Finals. It is not often that a player from the losing team wins that honor but he was so great in the playoffs that he was honored with the Trophy.



Then there is the Stanley Cup on display. At first I thought it was one of the earlier cups as the current one which has the Ducks players on it as well as the Kings and others was traveling with the Kings for the summer. However, there is a special cup for the team that wins the cup to travel with for the summer after they win. So we got to see the Cup with all the Anaheim Ducks on it. That was pretty exciting.





What a great time. We are glad we got to see this and it only took 2 1/2 hours to get home, with no traffic at the border. And we got another beautiful sunset to end the day.





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