Wildfire expansion grew the National Hockey League (NHL) by nearly one team per year for three decades until the late 1990s. As the NHL's long arm reached all the way out to Columbus and added the Blue Jackets to the calendar, the league missed Cincinnati, which has forever remained a minor league hockey town.
That's not the worst that could happen to a city. In 1997, Cincinnati became something of a minor league hockey capital shortly after haggling commenced between its beloved International Hockey League (IHL) club, the Cyclones, and their landlord, Cincinnati Gardens owner Jerry Robinson.
The Cyclones quickly began a building war by purchasing the old Riverfront Coliseum, renovating it into a place worth visiting and moving into their new riverfront home. Robinson retaliated by bringing in an American Hockey League (AHL) franchise, to be called the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks and affiliated with the NHL's Anaheim entry by the same nickname.
Cincinnati hockey fans impressively supported two top-level minor league teams for a couple years before the arrangement succumbed to numerous factors. No one ever really thought two teams could survive for long in the first place. But then came an economic downturn, the Blue Jackets came along as a cost-effective television alternative and construction on the riverfront made the Cyclones experience a little less palatable.
The Cyclones have since fallen on hard times, returning two years ago to their original home in the low-level East Coast Hockey League while the Ducks declared a marketplace victory. But the story doesn't end there. If you were to cruise the places where hockey fans hang out in Cincinnati and Columbus, the greater emotional stake in the Stanley Cup Finals would be found not in the NHL city but in the minor league city.
Probably only a few thousand people in Cincinnati are eaten up about the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim playing for The Cup. But they're in the game today, which is more than Blue Jackets fans can say. While hockey fans in Columbus have developed their attachments to the NHL just by seeing it every day, they can't claim players of their own are competing for the prize.
Undoubtedly, this spring's developments in the NHL playoffs have come as a bit of an unexpected pleasure to those who've spent their winter nights at the Gardens for the last six years. The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim are coached by Mike Babcock, who guided the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks to AHL playoff appearances two years straight before picking up the big league team this year. In addition, 19 players working now in Anaheim passed through Cincinnati on their way to the NHL.
Anaheim's Mighty Ducks began the NHL playoffs as a serious one-and-done candidate, having won fewer than half their games during the regular season and entering the bracket as the seventh of eight Western Conference seeds. Any team could have knocked them out of the playoffs by now. But the Ducks were most unlikely to survive because the three teams at the top of the conference are all fairly recent Cup winners.
Facing Detroit to begin the playoffs, the Ducks were cast as sparring chump for the Red Wings, who were opening their Stanley Cup defense. One can imagine Hockey Town at a fever pitch. Inevitably, during the national anthem, a Red Wings fan threw an octopus on the ice, echoing a Detroit sporting tradition that goes back to the Red Wings' Production Line days of the 1950s. The octopus' eight legs stand for the eight victories needed back then to win the championship in two rounds.
Detroit fans live for the moment when the march begins. But no one seized the moment better than Jean-Sebastien Giguere, the journeyman goaltender who landed with the Ducks by way of Cincinnati.
On his first night in goal for an NHL playoff game, Giguere pretty well broke the will of a champion, turning back 63 shots. The game tied 1-1 after regulation time, Giguere made 20 saves in the first overtime and survived a blast by Detroit's Luc Robataille off the post. Finally, the Ducks won on a goal by Paul Kariya in the third overtime.
The Ducks took the second game 3-2 at Joe Louis, scoring two goals in the third period. When the series went to Anaheim, Giguere continued to excel and the Ducks wrapped up the Wings in four games, the first time a defending Cup champion had been swept out of the first round since 1952.
As their reward, the Ducks were paired with Dallas for the second round. If the Stars weren't defending the Cup, they finished the regular season with the most points in the Western Conference. The Stars were heavily favored.
But Giguere never blinked. After allowing three goals in regulation time, which was the total he allowed in four games against Detroit, he made 40 saves in five overtimes against the Stars in Game 1. Petr Sykora scored 48 seconds into the fifth overtime, bringing to the Ducks the same immediate edge they established against Detroit.
Another overtime win on the road in Game 2 put the Ducks into a 2-0 advantage. The Stars put up a little more of a fight, but the Ducks were pretty sure they could win. After six games, the Ducks claimed a 4-2 victory, setting themselves up against another unlikely contestant, the Minnesota Wild, for the Western Conference Finals.
The Ducks polished off Minnesota with ease. Giguere played some of the best goal in playoff history, stopping 122 of 123 in four games. Shutouts in the first three games of the series ran his whitewash streak to 217 minutes and 54 seconds, the longest since 1951.
Now the Ducks are in the Stanley Cup Finals against opposition no better than their Western Conference foes. The New Jersey Devils came through the Eastern Conference after finishing second during the regular season with 108 points. But the Devils are another team with pedigree, and not just a hot goaltender like Giguere but a great goaltender of duration in Martin Brodeur.
The Devils won the first two games of the Cup Finals as Anaheim demonstrated virtually no offensive drive. But the Ducks remain alive after an uncharacteristic goof in which Brodeur lost his stick to allow a gliding shot by Anaheim's Sandis Ozolinsh from center ice in Game 3. The goal gave the Ducks a 2-1 lead at 14:47 of the second period, 45 seconds after the Devils had tied the game.
The Ducks needed overtime to win Games 3 and 4, but they like it that way, running their overtime record for the playoffs to 7-0 when Ruslan Salei (Cincinnati, 1997-98) scored at 6:59 of the extra period to win Game 3 and Steve Thomas scored 39 seconds into OT to clinch Game 4. Again, Giguere was flawless in goal, running his playoff record overtime shutout streak to more than 168 minutes.
Suddenly, the Ducks looked like they might have a chance again, tied 2-2 with Game 5 to be played Thursday night on the Devils' home ice. And if you ever found it unfortunate that Columbus has the NHL and Cincinnati doesn't, then maybe this shows it's not so bad to be a minor league hockey town.
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