It was medical and photo day at Honda Center today, the unofficial first day of training camp, where all 47 Ducks in camp go through medical tests, arduous fitness tests, photo shoots, video head shots and time with the media. As I've said before, it's kind of like going through the excitement of the first day of school, but having three exams, a pop quiz and a term paper due.

"It's one of the worst days of the year, by far," Bobby Ryan said. "It's the day everybody dreads because you get poked and prodded by doctors and then you've got to go out and give everything you've got. It's actually one of the more important team-building days of the year because we get together for lunch and we move on and talk about it."

It's an odd mix of having your health and fitness examined in a number of ways (some of them quite grueling), then sitting down and taking headshots and posed portrait shots, and posing for video that will later be used for pregame intros at Honda Center.

One of the photo shoots involved Perry posing with the Hart Trophy and Rocket Richard Trophy that he won last season. Teemu Selanne joined Perry for a shoot with the Rocket Richard, since he also won it, in 1998-99 when he had 47 goals with the Mighty Ducks. Selanne was clearly pumped to see the trophy, looking for his name etched on its bottom half. He also handed his iPhone to Mike Bolt of the Hockey Hall of Fame -- the so-called "Keeper of the Cup" as well as trophies like these -- so he could shoot a few photos (like this one) of Teemu holding it.

You can see some of that in this this behind-the-scenes video taken throughout the day, part of our coverage of today that has also included some photos posted on our Twitter page,

Tomorrow, of course, the Ducks are on the ice for the first time as camp opens here at Honda Center at 9 a.m. (again, open to the public).

You may have noticed that we've made a bit of a change here in the way you're reading Ducks Blog. We're switching the format to more of a ... well ... traditional blog, rather than the three-mile-long web page we've incorporated since this blog was started back in the spring of 2007 (you may remember that time, Ducks fans).

This will make each blog post a bit easier to read and easier to link to if you're sending it to a friend (I highly recommend this, by the way). It's also going to require me to come up with a catchy headline for each blog post, which as you can see above, I'm already failing at.

Hopefully you like the new format, and you'll let me know either way by sending me an email.