Mighty Big Message Sent by Ducks’ Start

Heads up, kids, there’s trouble in Irritating Spotlight Land, where officials are debating the title of the fourth Mighty Ducks movie.

D-bacle? D-meaning?

The Mighty Ducks, the real ones, we think, are tied for the fewest points in the 26-team National Hockey League.

They have given up the most goals in the league. They are the third-worst power-play team.

They have been playing games for nearly a month now, and have won once. And that’s not the worst of it.

The other night at the Pond of Anaheim, a mock emergency vehicle racing to a pregame promotion while manned by a mallard became stuck between the boards.

A woman was denied a valuable prize in a sing-along contest because she forgot the word, “Whoooah.”

And Emilio Estevez’s character was run over by a truck.

(Well, OK, that last one was wishful thinking).

There’s trouble in Get-That-Spotlight-Out-Of-My-Face Land, and it involves more than just the ice.

The coach says he doesn’t have many players anybody else would want.

The general manager says the players are essentially the same ones who came within one victory of the playoffs last year.

The president wonders if any of this would be happening if the coach had showed up for training camp on time, instead of coaching an American team to a major international championship.

For all of this, there are two words:

“Good.”

And, “finally.”

With injured star Paul Kariya probably returning Wednesday, the Ducks still figure to make the playoffs.

Ron Wilson is still a wonderful coach, and they still have a core of hard-working players capable of skating to stretches in which they lose only three of 17 games, as they did to end last season.

They have been awful, but they have played barely one-eighth of their schedule. The Pittsburgh Penguins have the same number of points, and nobody is calling Super Mario a sissy.

The issue here is not the start.

The issue is the message being sent by that start, and the sniping, and the empty seats in the Pond:

This hockey team is no longer something its owners can just clip together with plastic tabs and pile on a table underneath a flashing blue light.

This is no longer merely an attraction that will swivel and smile as thousands of smiling fans move past while saying, “Oh, that’s nice.”

In their fourth year, with expansion sibling Florida still unbeaten, the Ducks are a real hockey team with real expectations that will result in real ugly locker room scenes and real bad press if those expectations are not met.

Not to mention, the breaking of a 40-game home-sellout streak.

It is good that the folks at Disney finally get this message.

It is a shame they didn’t realize it last summer.

More money should have been spent on veteran free agents--Bernie Nicholls instead of Jari Kurri. More attention should have been paid to continuity--why add seven new faces and let tough-guy Todd Ewen walk? Less love should have been showered upon their unproven home-grown youngsters.

And what about Disney completing that contract extension it promised Wilson, something that will lock him up past this year? He’s only the hottest boss in the game, meaning next summer he would last only as long as one high-sticking penalty on the open market.

Disney should pay Wilson some of that money it was going to give his baseball counterpart, a guy named Jim Leyland. If nothing else, to spare the team the jokes about lame ducks.

As 11 games have shown, the Ducks are not a marketing vehicle that can be spiced up with one Teemu Selanne every four years.

Fans will boo, fingers will point, and real-life scripts will be written that make Emilio’s lines look like Pulitzer material.

Take the following, culled from two days of recent interviews:

Ron Wilson: “It is hard to replace people when other teams don’t want what you have. . . . We’ve been exposed as not a very deep team . . . the same reason guys haven’t been scorers for the last six or seven years is the reason they are not scoring now.”

David Karpa, defenseman: “In one sense, what Ron said might be reality. You look around this room and there’s not a lot of guys teams are looking for. We have maybe three or four really tradable guys.”

Jack Ferreira, general manager: “These are essentially the same players who did the job down the stretch last year.”

Tony Tavares, president: “In hindsight, having your coach away during training camp made a significant impact on our start. Our camp was as flat as it’s ever been. There was so much fanfare about the U.S. winning the World Cup that Ron was distracted early on.”

Wilson (who missed about a week of camp): “That is a theory that I really don’t buy into. What you do during those first days is conditioning, fundamental stuff. I beat most of the guys here anyway.”

Bobby Dollas, defenseman: “Things are going so bad, it’s very easy for us to pass [the blame] around. I think we need to go back to Step 1.”

And so the players did just that on Monday at their Anaheim practice facility.

First, somebody cranked up Bob Seger on the dressing-room stereo, his songs about hard times and the road, and soon a bunch of guys with black eyes and bruises were softly mouthing the words.

Then, Dollas and Kariya arranged for a team lunch, at a local sports grill, just the players, no media or boosters or charity backers, “just a bunch of guys doing wings and beer and talking about being a team,” Dollas said. “Like we all did at the start of our careers.”

It’s a shame Disney wasn’t invited to understand the workings of real people with real hearts striving for accomplishments that don’t involve dollar signs.

On second thought, let �em sweat.