Dallas eliminated the Anaheim Ducks from the NHL playoffs tonight, which is vaguely newsworthy because the Ducks were the defending champion. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have noticed at all. We barely did, anyway.

The NHL is as irrelevant to Southern California as snow tires. We’re just not all that interested. And don’t have to be.

It was nice of the Ducks to win the Stanley Cup last year.  It had been a while since a team from hereabouts won anything. But it was hockey, after all, and we hardly noticed.

The Ducks never really got it going this season. I blame the Cup Hangover.

The NHL season already is massively long, and the playoffs last into June.

If you win the Cup, you then are obliged to celebrate for at least two months, and everyone on the team gets to have it for at least a day. So a team keeps luxuriating in what it did last season … right into next season.

The Ducks partied so heartily that two of their best players, Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne, weren’t vaguely ready to go, once the season began. Niedermayer showed up a month or so into the season. Selanne didn’t get motivated until February.

Defending a championship is becoming rare, in the NHL. This marks five consecutive first-round exits for defending champions. The last time somebody won consecutive titles was 1997-98, by the Red Wings.

The partied-out Ducks never really got going. It couldn’t have helped that they had to travel to London to open the season. As if they needed that, after going to training camp with a massive victory hangover.

They had moments, but that magic was gone. They didn’t seem to have the hunger they had a year ago, when the had Never Won Nothin’. The defense was soft, the penalties still shockingly dopey and the offense sporadic.

Luckily, it’s SoCal, and we don’t mind. Sorry, Ducklings! You still have 2007! Carry on.

Maybe this team can actually spend three months off, regenerate, bring back most everyone …. and be a real contender next fall. When they don’t carry the burden of being defending champions.