Ducks Fill Their First Scrapbook With Snapshots, Records

These are the moments that made a season. . . .

Opening night. Celebration costs $480,000. Game isn’t worth two cents. Detroit 7, Mighty Ducks 2.

Sean Hill scores the historic first goal in the second period when a rebound caroms out to the right point and he slaps it home.

Goalie Ron Tugnutt raises his arms high five nights later after beating Edmonton for the franchise’s first victory. (Five months later, he does the same thing in a Montreal uniform when he beats the Ducks 10 days after they trade him.)

Terry Yake shares a top hat full of candy from Michael Eisner with his teammates, the day after Yake’s Oct. 19 hat trick helps upset the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.

“It was one game, but it built confidence that we can compete,” Stu Grimson remembered. “We knew we were capable of more. Our level of expectations rose.”

A six-game losing streak includes a loss to lowly Ottawa on Oct. 25. But the streak proves to be the longest all season.

The first and second losses to San Jose.

Tugnutt stops 120 of 124 shots (and Guy Hebert 33 of 34) as the Ducks go 4-0 on a trip through western Canada.

Coach Ron Wilson can’t suppress a grin when he emerges from the dressing room after the fourth victory on Nov. 24. “Break up the Mighty Ducks!”

The third and fourth losses to San Jose on consecutive days in November.

Anatoli Semenov leaves the ice bent over and holding his arm in agony after Grimson’s accidental hit dislocates Semenov’s left elbow on Dec. 7. The team’s leading scorer with 24 points, Semenov never regains his best form and scores only six more points all season.

Jarrod Skalde, a youngster fresh from the minors to replace Semenov, knocks in a rebound for the overtime game-winner against St. Louis in his first game.

Hebert makes 31 saves in the same game to beat his old team, St. Louis, and his old buddy, goalie Curtis Joseph.

Hebert looks up at the Maple Leaf Gardens scoreboard as his teammates slap him on the mask after his 38 saves shut out Toronto, 1-0, in another team first on Dec. 15. Tim Sweeney scores the only goal.

Wilson cracks up after the exhausted Ducks suddenly look like the Edmonton Oilers of the ‘80s and score a club-record seven goals--four in the second period--in a 7-5 victory at Winnipeg.

Tugnutt shuts out the New York Islanders.

Consecutive losses at Florida and Tampa Bay run the Ducks’ record against expansion teams to 0-9.

Ducks say goodby to historic Chicago Stadium, closing at season’s end, with a 6-2 victory on Jan. 6.

Another loss to San Jose.

The New York Rangers, looking for revenge, lose again at The Pond of Anaheim. The Ducks sweep the season series from the team that finishes with the best record in the NHL.

Don McSween is given a controversial five-minute major and a game misconduct for high-sticking against Wayne Gretzky, and the Kings break a scoreless tie with two power-play goals. “They said he was bleeding on the gum,” Wilson says afterward. “Give me a break!”

Hebert shuts out Vancouver.

Gretzky takes offense after the Ducks call him a whiner and has a hand in every goal in a 5-3 Kings’ victory Feb. 11.

Nine days later, Tugnutt leaves the ice as the morning skate begins to hear he’s been traded to Montreal for Stephan Lebeau. “I’ve lost a partner,” Hebert says.

The worst loss yet to the Sharks, 6-0.

Playoff hopes plummet. “Going into the game, we were looking at it as a life-or-death thing,” forward Garry Valk says. “There are 17 games left. We’re not written off yet.”

Turns out they are. San Jose loses only five of its final 18 games.

Three games in a row, the Ducks don’t score a goal, setting a club record with a scoreless streak of 200 minutes 26 seconds.

Bob Corkum breaks it against Chicago on March 11 when he picks off a pass to get out on a shorthanded breakaway, pulls up, fakes, and beats Ed Belfour.

Ducks finally beat one of the other California teams, ending an 0 for 10 streak with a victory over the Kings.

Pandemonium on the bench. Grimson scores his first goal of the season March 22. He last scored Dec. 31, 1992.

Corkum is helped off the ice at Philadelphia on March 27, his standout season ended after a skate blade severs a tendon in his right foot.

Lebeau, taking a page from Gretzky’s playbook, uses goalie Kelly Hrudey’s leg to bank a shot into the net as Ducks beat the Kings for the second time.

Ducks get one shot in the first period at Calgary, set a club low with 12 in a game.

Grimson strikes again, injuring Lebeau with a check meant for an Edmonton player on April 8.

Last road game of the season. Ducks set an NHL expansion record with their 19th road victory, beating Vancouver without Corkum, Yake, Lebeau, Shaun Van Allen or Todd Ewen. Team clinches fourth place, ahead of the Kings.

Joe Sacco scores his 19th goal--and 15th of the second half.

A 2-1 loss to Vancouver at home Wednesday ends the first season, and the sweaters come off until September.