The Anaheim Ducks got their name from a Disney movie.

 

The Anaheim Ducks got their name from a Disney movie.

Remember The Mighty Ducks? The Anaheim, California hockey team was named after the famous Disney film and was once owned by the company.

In 2007, a year after Disney sold the franchise, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim won the Stanley Cup.

Today they are known as the Anaheim Ducks.

Founded in 1993, the franchise was originally owned by the Disney Company and was known as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim after the then-recent Disney movie about a children’s ice hockey team, The Mighty Ducks (1992). After starting with three consecutive losing seasons, the Mighty Ducks were led to their first play-off berth in 1996–97 by high-scoring forwards Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya. Anaheim then returned to mediocrity, with three last-place divisional finishes between 1997–98 and 2001–02. In 2002–03 the team made a startling postseason run when the seventh-seeded (out of eight Western Conference clubs) Mighty Ducks were propelled into the Stanley Cup finals by the fantastic goaltending of Jean-Sébastien Giguère. Anaheim eventually lost that series to the New Jersey Devils, but Giguère won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the postseason’s most valuable player.