Why the Ducks scrapped the traditional morning skate

ANAHEIM — The morning skate is an NHL tradition as old as playoff beards, pregame meals of pasta and chicken, afternoon naps on game days and keeping your mitts off the Stanley Cup until you’ve actually won Lord Stanley’s cherished silver mug.
As the story goes, Toe Blake, or maybe it was Eddie Shore, started the practice of a brief morning game-day workout long ago in order to get his players out of the bars and into bed at a respectable hour. It was instituted to keep them fo