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.
