Ice hockey in the sun belt? Who would have thunk it? Sure, baseball was inevitable, and it came in the late 1950s, but hockey? With California?s burgeoning post-war population boom, as many Midwesterners and Dust Bowlers moved as far west as possible, all things were possible. But hockey? Now, forty years after its inception in California, hockey is not only a reality in the Golden State, it?s the champion of the world. The Ducks of Anaheim, who were almost conceived as a Disney movie tie-in joke in 1993, have won the Stanley Cup, arguably the most prestigious trophy in any sport. No longer a joke, the Ducks, who came into the league as the Mighty Ducks eponymously named after the film, have hoisted the Cup a mere 30 miles down the road from Los Angeles, where the heralded Kings started in 1967. To fully understand hockey?s position in California, it pays to understand how marginalized it was for many years. With the Dodgers and Giants baseball franchises moving to California in 1957, the national pastime was firmly implanted into California culture. New stadiums arrived soon afterwards, and baseball supplanted football as the top ticket in town, especially in sports-starved Los Angeles, whose only major sports franchise at the time was the Los Angeles Rams football team who had moved from Cleveland in 1946. The Lakers basketball team followed, moving from Minneapolis in 1960, but the Dodgers were LA?s hottest franchise, and remained through the 1970s until the Lakers tandem of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made them five time champions in the 1980s. Still the Kings, not completely buried in the Lakers? claimed home of the LA Forum, showed signs of brilliance. They boasted a high scoring line of Charlie Simmer, Dave Taylor, and Marcel Dionne, each a preeminent player in his own era of the early 1980s. The Kings frequently made the playoffs but never advanced far. Then, a few months after the Lakers final championship parade with Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar, the Kings did the unthinkable. They brought hockey?s greatest player to Los Angeles. Wayne Gretzky arrived in 1988 with due fanfare. Suddenly, the celebrities lined up at the Forum not for the Lakers, but for the Kings. Everything was in place. Except a Cup. Gretzky first four years led to disappointments, but in 1992-1993, they were poised to win. Their regular season was not spectacular, but they sailed through the playoffs, reaching the finals for the first time. However, they ran into a tough Montreal team, and with controversial plays and overtime losses, it wasn?t meant to be for the Kings, who lost four games to one. That same year, however, enter the Ducks. Aggressive and backed by Disney, they became an immediate Orange County attraction, magnified when Gretzky left the Kings in 1996, analogous to the Angels mid-to-late1990s drawing of power (across the street from the Ducks ?Pond? arena) away from the underachieving Dodgers of that decade. Above all the hype and Disney-ization, the Ducks featured two formidable offense forces ? a trade steal in 1996, Teemu Selanne, and original Duck Paul Kariya. Not only could both put the puck in the net with regularity, they became close linemates and friends. By 1997, they were already in the playoffs, and by 2003 after a three-year layoff, they were back and marched to the finals on the back of hot goalie JS Giguere, who was MVP of the playoffs ? a rarity for a player on a losing team as the Ducks succumbed to the Devils in a hard-fought seven-game series. All seemed lost when Kariya left the Ducks in 2005. But Disney sold the team, they changed from the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim to just the Ducks, and Selanne was brought back that year (he had left for five seasons to try other teams). Even without Kariya, he was a force again, and with Giguere and tough veteran defensemen such as Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger. The Ducks could still score, but now they intimidated as well. Rounded out by a youth movement throughout the team, they made it to the conference finals that year, and then handily marched to the Cup this season. Even with defensive competitors, the Ducks threw too many weapons at their opponents, winning consistently through the season (despite a December bump) and right through the playoffs. A semi-final win against Detroit was unpredictable but well-earned. Now, the Cup has at last come to Southern California. And though Gretzky doesn?t roam these lands any more, with parity and uneven success in California basketball and baseball, and no Los Angeles-area NFL team, perhaps NHL hockey will finally be recognized as a legitimate major sport in the area. With hockey having expanded into the sun belt through the last fifteen years, further acceptance seems inevitable. One more possibility in the near future: Kariya?s contract in Nashville expires this summer. Though Selanne is weighing retirement, perhaps another pairing with his friend could convince him to attempt a repeat.