The Stanley Cup finals begin today, the Ottawa Senators vs the Anaheim Ducks, but I'm in a quandary over who to support.

A few years ago it would have been easy. When they were still the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, named after a rubbish film with Emilio Estevez and sporting a ridiculous cartoon-character logo on their teal-green jerseys, I thought they were everything that was wrong with professional sport. How could people take hockey seriously when teams are called the Mighty Ducks? Their very existence distressed me. Everything about them was wrong, like the MK Dons, and the thought that my beloved Montreal Canadiens should have to sully their skates on their ice appalled me (I later found I shared that exact sentiment with a character in a Mordechai Richler novel!) But as of January 26, 2006 the team was officially renamed the Anaheim Ducks. Gone were the leisure-suit jerseys, gone was the daft logo. They looked like a proper team, with proper players and my antipathy started to abate.

But it should still be easy. I spent 4 of the happiest years of my life living in Ottawa. Those were years before the Senators returned to the city, which is why I'm a Montreal fan, but still - surely some hometown pride should count for something? And at least winning the Stanley Cup means something to the people in Ottawa: Anaheim's in California for God's sake - they don't care! Then there's the Canadian team thing. No Canadian team has won since 1993 (the Montreal Canadiens of course!) and the country is getting slightly obsessed with this. Mind you that's daft - Anaheim has more Canadian players than Ottawa. They even have a Canadian captain unlike Ottawa, but apparently that's not the point.

The main problem seems to be that Ottawa aren't a loveable team. They are like Chelsea, effective but you can't warm to them. Or at least you can't if you listen to my friend Turner. He really doesn't have a good word to say for the team or its fans. However I was about to tell him that the hometown ties were too strong for me and I was going to cheer for the Senators but then yet another obstacle appeared. I heard that Ottawa goalie Ray Emery had had a minor traffic accident. In his Hummer.

Oh dear.

You see I have a strict zero-tolerance policy towards Hummers.* If I see one on the street I make an uncharitable gesture in it's direction, every time. If it's in any way tied to an organisation, a bar, taxi, whatever, I boycott that firm. So that's a biggie, Ray.

As it is when the first game began this evening I still wasn't sure. But then looking at the players I thought about one of the special things that makes the Stanley Cup so great. They engrave the names of the winning team's players on the base of the cup. No matter how great your career has been, if your name doesn't appear on the cup somewhere then you know that something's missing. Just ask Ray Bourque. After 20 outstanding, but fruitless, years with the Boston Bruins he was traded to the Colorado Avalanche. In the very next year the Avs made it to the final and they won. In one of the most generous moments by a sportsman I can ever recall Avalanche captain Joe Sakic received the trophy but passed it straight to Ray Bourque to lift for the first time. There wasn't a dry eye in the house: watch this and tell me your not feeling it too.

So there's one name I'd really like to see engraved on the cup this year. He's spent 18 years in the league and in his very first season he set a record for goals by a rookie that stands to this very day. They used to call him the Finnish Flash but at 36 Teemu Selanne doesn't have the jets he once had back in Winnipeg and he's never won the Stanley Cup. But he's still a great player and one of the official-nicest-guys-in-hockey (in the Niall Quinn, Chris Powell mode back home), I cheered for him in Turin at the Olympics and he's got my vote this time. I really never thought I'd say it but - Go Ducks Go!



* Don't give me that Hummers are better than Priuses tosh. They aren't.