The song “California Dreaming” blared from the loudspeaker at Honda Center in mid-March.

Fans clad in orange, black, gray – maybe a little purple, crowded into the building for that night’s tilt between the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks.

There was no novelty between the two teams and their fan-bases, just utter stone cold hatred from the stands on down to the ice. The rivalry was intense, just as any major pairing of two squads with a high amount of dislike and disdain toward one another.

Hits, slap shots, boos, cheers – they were all present that night.

Hockey in California is not the same as the rivalries in Canada. Teams and players haven’t lived and grown up with it the same way.

But as far as the rest of the United States, California has become every bit the equal as some of the more traditional spots.

Rangers/Islanders? Sure it’s got history in a market that’s seen NHL hockey since the 1920s. The Flyers/Penguins is nasty – and have viewed some battles from the Mario Lemieux/Eric Lindros years through Sidney Crosby against Claude Giroux.

Blackhawks/Red Wings has been dumbed down by realignment, but there’s definitely hatred between the two markets.

Hockey in California isn’t a novelty anymore. It’s an important deal, and it’s going to get bigger, stronger and more important.

I moved to Los Angeles a little over a month ago. My first game post-move was that Kings/Ducks contest. And it was as intense as anything I’ve seen regular season wise from the Rangers or Islanders in games I saw live since my birth in New York City in 1982. OK, there were no fights in the stands, but that may have to do with this state’s lax drug laws.

People here have their own little slice of hockey heaven. The sport is big, but it doesn’t dominate the market. The passion level amongst the diehard fans is strong. Teams have their own pseudo celebrity fans, from Colin Hanks and Wil Wheaton with the Kings to Milo Ventimiglia and Snoop Dogg with the Ducks – unless Snoop Dogg has a kid who commits to the Kings.

Here is my story as how I’ve seen hockey through over one month as a Southern Californian.

Go to the rink on a Sunday …

At the Toyota Sports Center the Kings practiced. There were several hundred fans in the crowd at the triple-rink building in El Segundo, California. For supporters this proved the the final chance to see their group practice as defending Stanley Cup champs. The Kings were about to embark on a Western Canada roadtrip, one that eventually broke their season.

Were some of these people bandwagoners? Sure. Whenever a team has success, people start leaching on.

But there was definitely some old Kings paraphernalia in the crowd to indicate fans were a lot more into the franchise, which expanded in 1967-68, than some of the people who discovered the game in 2012, the year of LA’s first Stanley Cup.

The most interesting part of the scene involved a curious longhaired viewer of a youth game at the other rink. He had dashing good looks and a foreign accent. This was Ducks legend and Orange County resident Teemu Selanne, whose children play youth hockey.

He chatted with other parents, and went through his life anonymously at the rink – at least as much as you can for a guy who has scored more than 600 NHL goals.

From a youth hockey perspective, California is not a Northeastern or Midwestern state with more tradition in cold weather environments. But this place has grasped onto the novel concept that it doesn’t need to be freezing outside to play hockey indoors. And even outdoors in the winter, it’s cold enough in California at night to build a rink – as the NHL showed us with two Stadium Series games here.

According to USA Hockey’s registration on its website California had 25,288 USA Hockey players in 2013-14. This trailed just Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Granted, California has 38 million people, the largest population in the United States, so the numbers aren’t completely equal from a proportion standpoint. But the growth is there. In 2004-05 the total was 16,758 per USA Hockey’s website. In that same timespan, for example Massachusetts went from 44,515 to 48,074.

The Kings recently started a high school hockey league. And according to the Ducks, youth hockey participation in Southern California has grown 40 percent in the last five years. The Ducks also have a high school league that has 41 teams. Per the Kings, there are 28 ice rinks from Bakersfield to San Diego. The Sharks say there are 13 full sheets of ice for playing in the Bay Area.

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