With a few more years on their respective resumes and a little less hair on their heads since they last played together during the Ducks’ championship season of 2007, forwards Dustin Penner, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry were reunited Thursday as the Ducks took to the ice for their first on-ice training camp sessions at Anaheim Ice.

The trio, broken up in the summer of 2007 when Penner signed a free-agent offer sheet with the Edmonton Oilers and then went on to play for the Kings, seemed to fall into its old, familiar pattern Thursday despite the long time apart. Perry said he had some odd flashbacks to their good old days during the practice session.

“A few times today when he was skating down the wing,” Perry said, smiling. “Once he gets going there’s not too many guys that can stop him, with that big body. Hopefully we can just continue that.”


Penner will take the place of Bobby Ryan, whom the Ducks traded to Ottawa for wingers Jakob Silfverberg and Stefan Noesen and a first-round draft pick in 2014. Perry said the dynamic of the line should be much the same, with a down-low cycle game that capitalizes on the size of all three forwards.

“I don’t know if you saw too many goals off the rush. You might see the odd one,” Perry said. “A lot of it came from going to the net hard and crashing the net.


“Dustin, with him on the line, he’s going to be doing the same thing. It’s going to be good. I think we’re going to be fighting over who’s going to be in front of the net more.”

Penner, now almost 31, said the biggest change is that the trio must find a new nickname. “Unfortunately we can’t call ourselves the Kid Line anymore,” he said.


“It was a lot of fun to be out there with those guys again. It’s déjà vu. I keep noticing things like that over and over again. Just the guys, the atmosphere, being here at Anaheim Ice. It’s no longer [named] Disney but we’re looking at pictures from eight, nine years ago of guys that were here. It’s pretty interesting as you get older to look back and see how far you’ve come.”

Continuing the déjà vu theme, Penner has taken back No. 17, which he wore during his Duck years. He claimed he did it out of practicality, not sentiment.


“My mum led the way on that charge,” he said. “She didn’t want to change the number on the jersey she had at home.”

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