The high-flying Ducks just aren’t on our radar

If the Lakers were the top team in the NBA and had set a league record for road victories, all of Southern California would be talking about it.

Lakers flags would be flapping outside car windows. The south wall of the Hotel Figueroa across from Staples Center would have those giant portraits -- maybe Bynum, Abdul-Jabbar, Chamberlain. No first names needed. Sports talk radio would be ablaze with Lakers callers. Sports bars would overflow with fans cheering every jump shot and roaring at every rebound.

The Ducks, whose Anaheim home at the newly renamed Honda Center is only 40 minutes away, have the best record in the National Hockey League.

But there are no flags. No giant portraits. And their games might not even be on the TV at the local sports bar -- Lakers, Clippers, Bruins and Trojans often take precedence. And in the spring, add Dodgers and Angels to the list.

As they open another homestand tonight, the Ducks are a make-heads-turn 25-4-6 and 12-2-2 on the road with a roster full of players who are at or near the top in many statistical categories -- Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, Teemu Selanne, Jean-Sebastien Giguere. But here, first names are needed.

Laker town

“In Southern California it takes an awful lot to create a buzz. I don’t know if we’re cynical, but I think it takes an ongoing great performance,” said David Carter, executive director of USC’s Sports Business Institute and a rally towel-waving fan during the Ducks’ improbable run to the 2003 Stanley Cup finals, when they lost to the New Jersey Devils in seven games.

“The Ducks are leading the league and just had a great road trip, but they’ve been doing it at a time when college football has cast a large shadow and the UCLA basketball team is undefeated. There always seems to be competition for attention that might otherwise go to hockey.

“This is a Laker town and a USC football town, and we’d love to have the Dodgers up there with them. There’s a sprinkle of other contenders that constantly push hockey down the totem pole.”

Troubled league

Indeed, hockey has had its troubles, and not just in Southern California. The NHL vanished from the sports map after it canceled the 2004-05 season because of a labor dispute. The league and the players union didn’t forge an agreement until July 2005, but teams moved quickly to get fans back, including cutting ticket prices. It seemed to work.

But this past summer, many teams raised those prices. That may be a reason attendance this season has slipped about 1.5% from last season.

The Ducks, however, are bucking that trend. In their first 19 home games, they averaged 15,377 fans, up 13.5% over a year ago. That includes three announced sellouts in the 17,174-seat Honda Center, and advance sales indicate the next 10 games might sell out, starting tonight against Calgary.

Yet the Ducks, who not only made that Cup run in 2003 but also reached the Western Conference finals last spring, haven’t recaptured the frenzy of their early years, when they filled the arena -- then known as the Arrowhead Pond -- to 99.4% of capacity their first five seasons.

Brian Burke, the Ducks’ general manager, knows the history and understands what’s needed in a Southern California market full of superstars and celebrities.

To win and entertain.

“We’re very pleased with the fan response. We’d like the building full, but one good playoff run and one good 35-game segment is not going to erase years of mediocrity,” he said. “A lot of people who left, left for a reason. They had a couple of star players in Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne but they never built around those players. It was consistent mediocrity. No one is going to pay to watch that long-term.”

Burke is the man perhaps most responsible for these new high-powered, fast-flying Ducks. Hired in 2005 by new owners and Orange County philanthropists Henry and Susan Samueli, Burke remolded the team into one that is far more skillful than the tenacious but low-scoring team that Disney introduced in 1993 and, to the disbelief of the NHL, named after a movie.

Burke favors dynamic, aggressive teams and had a core of promising young players to build on when he arrived. He added the slick-skating Niedermayer as a free agent in 2005 and traded for Pronger last summer, lifting the Ducks to the NHL elite.

Tough sell

But hockey is a tough sell in most cities in the U.S., not just Southern California. And the Ducks will never surpass the Lakers or Dodgers in popularity. Still, they’re making people look.

Beyond the on-ice success, the Ducks see signs of progress.

* Their season ticket base, which had bottomed at 7,000 coming out of the lockout, hit 12,100 last week.

* Sponsors that fled a few years ago are returning in force. Honda agreed to a 15-year, $60-million naming rights deal this year. Such national corporations as Pepsi, Cingular and Delta Airlines signed up, as has California-based Rubio’s.

* Fueled by a change in the team’s name from the Disney-inspired Mighty Ducks to simply Ducks as well as redesigns of the logos and uniforms-- Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom Corp., insisted that orange be retained in honor of Orange County -- team merchandise sales are soaring. Total sales at the team store at the Honda Center are up 85% over a year ago, and sales through the NHL.com store were up 235% in October compared to a year ago and 174% in November.

The Ducks are part of a 51% leaguewide increase in merchandise sales through NHL.com. And NHL executives have projected that increases in gate receipts, thanks partly to increased ticket prices, and revenue from licensed products, merchandising and new media will raise league revenue about 5%, to about $2.3 billion.

Carter of the Sports Business Institute praised Tim Ryan, the Ducks’ chief operating officer, and Bob Wagner, the club’s chief marketing officer, for bringing experience and deep community ties that advertisers value.

“It speaks to stability and marketing continuity,” Carter said. “This gives them corporate momentum that allows them to remain competitive on the ice.... Fans need to know that ownership is always attempting to put a team on the ice that’s in a position to win.”

But the Ducks also share one of the league’s biggest woes: Not a lot of people are watching hockey on television.

Who’s watching

After the lockout, the NHL moved from ESPN2 to Versus, which remains a little-known cable network struggling to find an audience, even though it is available in 70 million cable homes.

The first 22 games on the network this season averaged a 0.2 rating, equal to a year ago, or 140,000 homes. Even the NHL’s strategy to market its young stars, like Pittsburgh Penguins phenom Sidney Crosby, didn’t help. The network registered the same 0.2 for last Monday’s much-promoted game that featured Crosby, teammate Evgeni Malkin, and the Washington Capitals’ Alexander Ovechkin.

In comparison, the NBA during the 2005-06 regular season averaged a 1.1 rating on TNT. On ESPN, it averaged a 0.9, or 810,000 homes..

The Ducks’ local numbers are small as well, but the trend is upward. According to Nielsen Media Research, the ratings on FSN Prime Ticket are up 59% over a year ago, the biggest growth among NHL teams on Fox regional sports networks. On average, 16,000 TV viewing households in the 5.6-million market area have watched Ducks games, up from 9,000 last season. The team has not yet appeared on Versus this season.

For NHL teams, low ratings hurts more than their pride.

The league’s TV revenues are paltry compared with the billion-dollar deals negotiated by the more popular NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball, so clubs can’t count on TV money to make them profitable. Add to the mix the collective bargaining agreement, which guarantees players 54% of league revenues and pegged the salary cap at $39 million for 2005-06.

The Ducks acknowledged losing $15 million last season. Ryan said they anticipate losses of $12 million this season, but that the five-year plan put in place by the Samuelis when they bought the team from the Walt Disney Co. is unfolding ahead of schedule.

“At this point of the season, Brian Burke has given us one heck of a hockey team, which makes our job on the business side that much easier,” he said.

Ryan said the Ducks’ target audience is the Inland Empire, Orange County, northern San Diego County and into Long Beach. That overlaps with the Kings, who have the advantage of a 40-year history but are struggling on the ice and at the gate.

The Kings’ average attendance is down about 1,400 compared to a year ago, but they see the Ducks’ success as a boon.

“It means more hockey fans when you have good hockey being played,” said Shawn Hunter, the Kings’ president of business operations. “What is really going to solidify hockey here is when these two teams meet in the playoffs.”

The NHL agrees both teams can thrive. “Even when things weren’t going as well, we always have had faith in the marketplace,” said Bill Daly, the NHL’s deputy commissioner.

Kids club

The Ducks have had to actively cultivate that marketplace. They budgeted $400,000 for a fan development department, which includes a kids club aimed at fourth-graders. Ryan said the Ducks expected 2,000 kids, got 5,300 and could have 6,000 before season’s end. “Those 6,000 might turn into 8,000 next season,” he said. “Those fourth-graders will become eighth-graders and 12th-graders and, eventually, parents.”

Wagner said the team’s decline had left “a lot of fence mending to be done” when the Samuelis took over.

“People were saying, ‘We’ll come back, but how is it going to be different?’ ” Wagner said. “For us, it was, ‘Trust us, get on board, we’ll prove what we can do.’

“It’s fun again,” he said.

helene.elliott@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Chris Foster contributed to this report.