Not their cup of tea

To say that Southern California has Cup fever might be an overstatement.

Call it the Stanley sniffles. Mild aches and pains with a chance of becoming something stronger.

So far, the Ducks are heading into the NHL's Stanley Cup finals against the Ottawa Senators on Monday with far less buzz than would accompany a team from a traditional hockey town or, for that matter, a championship run by the Angels, Dodgers or Lakers.

No preponderance of flags waving from cars or wall-to-wall jabber on sports talk radio. No fans naming their first-born Teemu in a desperate attempt to win tickets.

On a recent evening at various sports bars around the Honda Center in Anaheim, patrons wore baseball caps and basketball jerseys. There wasn't a Ducks hat or shirt in sight.

"The Angels are much more popular ... even now," said David Robertson, sitting at the bar.

His friend, Mark Bushik, a self-proclaimed hockey aficionado, mused: "The general population doesn't care."

It is a curious predicament for a team that has reached the Stanley Cup finals in two of the last four seasons -- not counting a lockout-obliterated year -- and has sold out 31 consecutive games.

Tickets for Game 1 are going for upward of $1,500, with thousands of fans who cannot get into the arena expected to gather around big-screen televisions at bars from Burbank to Irvine.

But this hard-core following has not translated into conspicuous and widespread displays of public affection, not even in Orange County, which intrigues Tom Boyd, an associate marketing professor at Cal State Fullerton.

The Detroit native recently visited his hometown and noticed Red Wings fans everywhere, all those shirts and hats and car flags. Upon returning to the Southland, even as the Ducks defeated his boyhood team in the Western Conference finals, he saw nothing.

"Very little evidence of excitement," he said.

Boyd understands that hockey remains something of an oddity here. He knows the Ducks must compete for attention among other teams in the region and a host of leisure activities that range from beaches to amusement parks.

In image-conscious Southern California, he sees another element. It involves "psychosocial consequences."

People behave as ardent fans partly because of how they think it will make them look in the eyes of others, the associate professor said.