Anaheim Ducks vs. Minnesota Wild

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A Tuesday in December has nothing to recommend it. Nothing is on, nothing is happening, and the evening tends to get spent indoors deciding not to do anything. Hockey fixes this better than any other sport, because a hockey crowd on a weeknight is a different animal from a weekend one. It is the people who actually follow the team, sitting closer together because the building is not full, and you can pick out individual voices from across the ice — someone four sections over yelling at a defenseman by his first name. The Ducks host Minnesota at Honda Center, which the people who have held seats since the nineties still call the Pond, and the Wild are the kind of opponent that produces a tight, low-scoring, genuinely good game instead of a shootout. Both teams check hard and neither cheats for offense, so the hour goes quickly and the third period actually means something. Puck drops at 7. Katella Avenue, Anaheim, Tuesday the first of December.