ANAHEIM — A crowd of over seven thousand filled the lower bowl at Honda Center Saturday afternoon at the second annual Anaheim Ducks Skills Showdown, a skills competition that draws on the players' competitiveness and good-natured trash talking to form a well-supported, well-executed new tradition of Ducks hockey.
And yes, Corey Perry broke out the mini-stick for an encore from his All-Star Game shootout move, scoring top-shelf on a backhand during the breakaway drill.
While Steve Carroll, Brian Hayward and Kent French kept the crisp presentation fresh and moving along, it was Bruce Boudreau, acting as ice-level guest analyst who owned the event.
A collection of Boudreau beauties:
On Sheldon Brookbank's attempt in the shootout competition:
"I can see why Sheldon hasn't scored a goal this year."
On Corey Perry breaking out the mini-stick:
"It's impressive he could score using Jason Blake's stick!"
On George Parros' domination of the accuracy shot competition two years in a row:
"It goes to show that anybody can win at anything."
After the game, Boudreau also acknowledged a fondness for skills competitions, especially for players who don't really have an inside track to be heading to the All-Star Game anytime soon.
"Who doesn't want to ever get their shot measured for how hard it is? I always wanted to do that," Boudreau said. "Or the fastest skater, or the relay race, or the other one would be the most accurate shot. Guys will get out there, whether you're pro or amateur or whatever the day after you watch one of those things, and you'll say, ‘pass me some pucks and I'll see if I can hit the four corners,' and it's an event that's great. So when you get a chance to do that when you've never done that before, I think it's really interesting to measure yourself up. There's lots of guys that say, ‘well, Chara shot a hundred and eight miles an hour, maybe I could, maybe not 108, but I could shoot pretty darn hard,' and they go out there and find out their shot's 82, and they realize, put it in perspective how hard his shot really is."
A year after emerging as the surprise winner in the inaugural shot accuracy contest, George Parros elicited one of two standing ovations on the afternoon when he hit four targets on four shots, followed immediately by the second ovation when Perry matched Parros, shot by shot. Eight shots, eight targets.
"Two years in a row. That's all I'm going to say," Parros said to Hayward, the on-ice host.
It was Team Selanne that won the event for the second straight year, though it didn't come without some string pulling, with Selanne at one point chastising Perry for his ignorance of the rules in one competition, as the reigning MVP failed to shoot a designated puck above the height of the crossbar in order to be eligible for an extra point. His shot along the ice and into the open net didn't count, and his subsequent above-the-crossbar attempt from 180 feet away missed the net.
Selanne also prodded Perry about failing to break one of the targets in the accuracy contest after grazing it.
"Corey Perry shoots muffins, and he couldn't even break the coins, so we were giving him a hard time," Selanne said.
If you're not fluent in hockey-ese, That's "Corey Perry shoots [very light shots], and he couldn't even break the [Styrofoam targets]."
Cam Fowler edged Lubomir Visnovsky by 1/100 of a second in the fastest skater competition, while Ryan Getzlaf's 99.3 mile an hour blast registered as the hardest shot of the afternoon. Bobby Ryan registered a 98.2 mile an hour shot, with Luca Sbisa clocking in at 98.1.
After winning the event, black-and-orange clad Team Selanne was able to hoist the competition's trophy – the Porcelain Pig – on the ice for the second consecutive year. While it's not quite the trophy won on that same ice five years prior, it adds pageantry and competition to a new Anaheim Ducks tradition.
"It was similar to when I hoisted the Stanley Cup. It's pretty heavy, too," Selanne said of winning the Porcelain Pig for the second straight year.
"This pig came home, so good."
For more coverage of the Skills Showdown, make sure to tune in to the second intermission of Monday's game between Anaheim and the Calgary Flames.
