from Mike Botticello of FoxSports,
FOX Sports Live caught up with Hanks as he recently dropped the ceremonial first puck at Staples Center and cheered on his beloved defending Stanley Cup champs.
FSL: Given your time there, you had plenty of exposure to it ... what is the main difference in the sports culture of Canada compared to the U.S.?
HANKS: Well the hockey coverage ... yeah there's a lot more of it. It's the first 15 minutes on "SportsCentre." Coming from the U.S., it's kind of like walking into a "Twilight Zone," where everything is oddly familiar but yet strikingly different. So it was very nice for me to basically talk hockey with pretty much anyone I ran into. I enjoyed that.
Living in LA, there's only a select few (hockey fans), and it's more of like a secret club. Everyone thinks Los Angeles is not a hockey town. And that is absolutely not true. It is just an underground hockey town. It's like Fight Club. We all break the first rule, though.
Kings fans in LA definitely know their stuff. Hockey fans in LA definitely know their stuff. You just have to find each other, and then it's like a secret bond that you have.
FSL: You've been a Kings fan since '87, and you know how things were before these two banners were up in the rafters. What has it been like to witness?
HANKS: It's incredible really. You know, a huge first step was this building (Staples Center). Once the organization moved to Staples, you knew, OK, things are really going to be different....
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