When the Admirals first announced that The Goo Goo Dolls would play a pregame concert this season, my first thought was "They're still around?"

Sure enough, vocalist / guitarist Johnny Rzeznik, drummer Mike Malinin and bassist Robby Takac are still around and doing well. In a set that lasted roughly 80 minutes, The Goo Goo Dolls put forth a solid effort and didn't seem to bear any wear that would be expected from a group that's played together for nearly 22 years -- not to mention, one that was in the regular rotation of my CD player back in high school.

A lot of bands that hit the road at this point in their careers choose to focus solely on newer material, with only courteous nods to their previous hits at the end of the show. Not so Saturday night, where the set list reached back to the group's early days.

"We're going to do one from before you were born," Rzeznik said before ripping into an enthusiastic version of "Cuz You're Gone," from "Superstar Car Wash" released in 1993.

The rockers alternated tracks from their newest original disc, "Let Love In" (released in April 2006 ... the band released a greatest hits collection in November), with some of their classics. The second song of the night, "Slide," off 1998's "Dizzying up the Girl," sounded almost as crisp as it did on the CD I ripped into my iPod last summer. Rzeznik's vocals didn't have the typical strain you hear as a singer tries to adjust his previous work to his current set of pipes.

The show was a big hit for the Admirals, who have had better success in drawing up-and-coming country acts (Jason Aldean comes to town on Feb. 8) as well as popular rock acts from the past (former Poison frontman Bret Michaels will perform a month later) than "big-name" acts currently on tour with recent work. The team drew 13,843 -- its largest crowd of the season.