Ferreira Heavy-Handed in Selecting His Players : Hockey: With the draft light on scorers, Ducks' general manager loads up on defense and goaltending, starting with top choice Hebert.

By ROBYN NORWOOD

June 25, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

QUEBEC CITY — Guy Hebert went fishing Thursday near Troy, N.Y., and came back a Mighty Duck.

Glenn Healy was traveling in Ireland, and he might not know yet.

And Terry Yake and his wife, Tanya, were waiting eagerly to see if they would be calling the nice Mighty Duck season-ticket holders they met while honeymooning in Hawaii. They will, Yake says, and that offer of hospitality better have been serious because it is about to be accepted.

After Thursday’s NHL expansion draft, there are suddenly 24 players who can call themselves Ducks--at least until Phase II of the draft today, when as many as three of them could move on to the other recent expansion teams.

And though some were mighty happy, there is at least one Duck, the Kings’ Lonnie Loach, who is mighty skeptical about moving down the freeway to the team with the strange name.

“I don’t know about it,” said Loach, who scored 10 goals for the Kings last season and was drafted sixth from the bottom. “I’m already getting ripped back home.”

Duck General Manager Jack Ferreira, suffering from a painful skin condition caused by burns from ultraviolet light treatment for psoriasis, directed the team from a draft table that included Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner, wearing a Mighty Duck baseball cap and a Mickey Mouse tie.

Until Thursday, team president Tony Tavares said, it was “all smoke and air.” Until Thursday, the Ducks were selling the feathers off something that didn’t exist.

“Now we have some players,” Tavares said.

After losing a coin toss that allowed the Florida Panthers to take goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck from Vancouver with the No. 1 pick, the Ducks quickly used the Nos. 2 and 3 picks to chose Hebert, 26, a St. Louis goalie who would be better known if he hadn’t been the backup to Curtis Joseph, and Healy, 30, the former King whose inspired goaltending in the playoffs helped the New York Islanders upset Pittsburgh.

“We’re really pleased,” Ferreira said after drafting a team heavy on youth and surprisingly heavy on heavies--Chicago’s Stu Grimson, Pittsburgh’s Troy Loney and the Kings’ Jim Thomson were among the enforcers taken, indicating the team’s commitment to the Disney image won’t mean no fighting allowed.

“Scoring, it’s going to be tough some nights,” Ferreira said. “We’re hoping the young guys will develop, like Tim Sweeney and Steve King. . . . We’ll be counting on goaltending and defense.”

It would appear so. The team’s 13 forwards combined for 73 NHL goals last season--fewer than the individual totals of Buffalo’s Alexander Mogilny and Winnipeg’s Teemu Selanne.

“Obviously, (the talent) is limited,” said Pierre Gauthier, the Ducks’ assistant general manager. “This year was better than last year. This is a start. It’s a chance to start selling the team . . . and the T-shirts and the hats.”

The leading scorers the Ducks picked were Yake from Hartford, who had 22 goals and 31 assists, and Anatoli Semenov from Vancouver, who had 12 goals and 37 assists.

“I was very excited,” Yake said. “My wife and I are looking forward to going. We think it will be a great opportunity, but we were a little bit disappointed initially about leaving family and friends.”

By evening, Yake already had a scouting report on the team.

“I think we’ll do better than some people think,” he said. “There’ll be nights when we have trouble scoring goals, maybe have trouble doing everything. But I see a lot of ability among some of the younger guys--Steven King, Tim Sweeney, of course. Loney and Grimson are big, tough guys who hold their own. I guess (New Jersey’s Jarrod) Skalde is a really good passer. I know (Toronto’s Joe) Sacco can skate like the wind. Myself, I made a few plays the last year or so. I played in Hartford with (Randy) Ladouceur, who was our captain. I suspect he’ll be one of the team leaders, one of the ones we’ll look up to.”

Goaltenders were the focus of the draft because of the prime players available, with the existing 24 teams able to protect only one. Had the Ducks won the coin flip, they would have taken Vancouver’s Kay Whitmore with the No. 1 pick, but draft guidelines allowed teams to lose only one goaltender, so Vanbiesbrouck’s selection took Whitmore off the board.

After Hebert and Healy, the Ducks’ third goaltender is Edmonton’s Ron Tugnutt, though the team stands a slim chance of losing one of their choices in Phase II today, when Tampa Bay, Ottawa and San Jose have an opportunity to select from the 1993 teams’ unprotected players. The Ducks probably will protect Hebert and gamble that no one will take Healy, a restricted free agent who could sign elsewhere unless his team matches the offer.

The rest of the draft pool got thinner as the day went on, because teams were allowed to lose only two players, and could not lose both a goalie and a defenseman.

“We went for talent first,” Gauthier said. “With five defensemen and nine forwards protected by each team, there was not that much talent available. We had a priority to go for talented players first and then go from there and get character.”

The Ducks let Florida make the first choice among defensemen in order to take the second and third. They selected New Jersey’s Alexei Kasatonov, 33, an experienced Russian veteran who has been in the NHL four years, and Montreal’s Sean Hill, 23, who is highly regarded.

The Ducks went for youth often, using their first forward selection to take King, 23, who had only seven goals in 24 games with the Rangers last season but collected 68 points in 53 minor league games.

“It’s pretty nice to feel wanted,” he said.

Loach lasted a long time in the draft pool, being the 42nd pick overall. He got the news on his answering machine when he returned from a vacation in Palm Springs.

“We had such a good thing going with the Kings,” he said. “I think I was going to get the chance to play here. I’m only 25. I don’t know if they took me because they wanted me. . . . If I’m just drafted to be drafted, it’ll be like when Ottawa drafted me and didn’t play me. I’ve got to play a lot and I’ve got to prove myself again.”

Despite having a roster, the team that plays at Anaheim Arena this fall won’t look exactly like the group chosen Thursday. The Ducks could lose players in Phase II, make trades or sign free agents, and there is still Saturday’s amateur draft, though that will contribute more to the future than to next season.

Still, Thursday gave the team a piece of history--Guy Hebert, the first Mighty Duck.

“I came home and my little brother said, ‘You’d better get in here, you’re a Duck,” Hebert said. “I didn’t really believe it, but then I got excited. I’m surprised, I’m happy. I didn’t get too play too much in St. Louis behind Curtis Joseph, understandably.

“To be that first goalie in the history of the team means they must think something of me, or I wouldn’t have been chosen.”

Times staff writer Lisa Dillman contributed to this story.

* A LOOK AT THE PLAYERS

Capsule profiles of the 24 players drafted by the Mighty Ducks. C6

* FLORIDA’S DRAFT

The Panthers took goalie John Vanbiesbrouck, who played for the New York Rangers last season, with first pick. C8