“I just have one suit and a couple of shirts and a pair of slacks,” Brown said. “I generally pack light. Even if this was all a North American trip, I just pack light and do dry cleaning in the hotel. It’s a lot easier than packing four suits and six shirts.

“On a long trip, you almost become zombie, really, when it comes to different hotels. You’ll end up with two or three different hotel key cards in your pocket.”

The Kings and the Ducks will do it all over again when they open their seasons overseas.

The Kings played an exhibition game in Hamburg, Germany, on Tuesday followed by regular-season games in Stockholm, Sweden, and Berlin. The Ducks play an exhibition and season opener in Helsinki, Finland, and another game in Stockholm.

It is part of the NHL Premiere. The annual sojourn is integral to marketing the league but players have quietly grumbled about the toll it takes on their bodies, and it has become known for hanging like a cloud over a team’s season. 

The London trip essentially derailed the Ducks’ season because they had to play three subsequent road games in Detroit, Columbus and Pittsburgh.

“We went on to Columbus and we opened their building and we didn’t have any gas for that one,” Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle said.

“And then we went to Pittsburgh and we had nothing. We got demoralized in the game. That was a choice that would be very, ill-founded? Stupid? You can push your players to go, but if they’re not rested then you’re not giving them a chance.”

The Kings are in the same predicament this time because they come back for road games at New Jersey and Philadelphia. That equates to more than two weeks away from home.

“I think the travel is much more (intense) this time around,” Brown said. “It’s a vast time change. That’s the hard part. The travel is one thing. When you’re in a three time-zone range you can kind of just get by … it’s a matter of getting into the schedule as soon as you can.”

Anaheim has it easier because it gets nearly a week off between the game in Stockholm and its home opener on Oct.14. But their time in Europe is squeezed into a five-day period.

“Jet lag is not just a myth. It’s for real,” said Ducks defenseman Toni Lydman, who returns to his home Finland every summer.

“You might get a little bit adjusted to the time over there and then you’re already flying back. It’s going to be tough, mentally and physically. Your daily cycle is going to be thrown off a little bit coming back. At least we have a few days after the trip before we play the next game.”

Anaheim’s trip is highlighted by the return of Lydman, Saku Koivu and country hero Teemu Selanne to Finland as the Ducks play Selanne’s former club team, Jokerit.

Lydman expects a circus atmosphere but looks forward to it.

“It’s going to be fun to see how people react to NHL teams coming over and watching a regular-season NHL game over there because people don’t see live games,” he said.

“Usually if there are live games over there, it’s usually nighttime and not too many people have the luxury of seeing it. It will be nice to bring them at least one game.”

It still won’t be all fun and games for Carlyle, who is known to run long practices no matter the time of year.  The Ducks will arrive back in Southern California at 7 a.m. on Sunday “and coaches will be at work the next morning,” Carlyle said.

The players? Carlyle joked that he hadn’t decided what they will do but conceded it won’t be a practice.

Said Carlyle, “I don’t think I’d be in the popular category if I did something like that.”

Notes

It probably wasn’t a good sign that Mike Smith had to beat out Jason LaBarbera for the opening-night start, but Phoenix coach Dave Tippett gave Smith the nod after the Coyotes’ preseason finale victory against a San Jose team that was missing its top line plus Dan Boyle and Douglas Murray … Martin Havlat (shoulder) and Antti Niemi (cyst) didn’t play in the preseason for San Jose but are expected to be ready for the season opener … Tomas Vincour appears to have won a job out of training camp at right wing for Dallas although his time could be diminished when Adam Burish returns from injury … Drew Doughty made his preseason debut Tuesday for the Kings against the Hamburg Freezers after he signed an eight-year, $56 million contract Friday.

Photos by Getty Images