Gulls to Encounter a Changed Team : Hockey: New Coach Rick Dudley runs training camp a little differently.

As incongruous as it might appear with all the hot weather of late, it’s ice hockey season. The Gulls open their third training camp Tuesday at the Mira Mesa House of Ice.

It’s a season that has sparked high levels of anticipation because of several changes that took place during the summer.

The first change was the firing of the coach, Don Waddell, by the vice president, Don Waddell.

The second was an aggressive pursuit of personnel. Going into Tuesday’s first day, the Gulls have 15 players under contract, 12 more than they did at this point last year.

The third change was the hiring of a new coach, Rick Dudley, the former coach of the NHL Buffalo Sabres. Dudley led the Sabres to a 45-27-8 record in 1989-90. That was the third best record in the league.

Dudley has insisted upon a fourth change, a team weight room. He says he wants only players with character, and he will test that character by how hard they work out.

Keith Gretzky--a holdover from last year’s Gull team, which finished 45-28-9 (99 points) before losing to the Peoria Rivermen in the first round of the playoffs, knows what to expect from the new coach. He played for Dudley a few years ago in Flint, Mich.

“He’s tough,” Gretzky said. “Real tough, and you have to work real hard. He loves to win.”

How badly? The taskmaster couldn’t wait until Tuesday and already has begun putting players through a daily regimen.

“There’s four or five of us who have been in town for about a week now,” said forward John Anderson, who will be in his first year with the Gulls. He also is Dudley’s assistant coach. “And we’ve been working out since we got here. It’s only been a week, but I can tell a difference already. To give you an example of (Dudley’s) workouts, yesterday we started at 8 a.m. and didn’t get done until 7 at night.”

What are Anderson’s early impressions of his new coach?

“He’s really physically fit.”

Dudley maintains a strict diet that begins each day with a breakfast of six scrambled egg whites cooked with green onions, chased with six ounces of carrot juice.

While Dudley has not pushed his eating habits onto his players, his workouts have demanded that they refrain from bad habits.

“Like even having a beer,” Anderson said. “The next day is so tough, a beer will really hurt you.”

Anderson is a key addition. He will be asked to take up some of the scoring slack lost when Dmitri Kvartalnov (60 goals, 58 assists) was drafted by the Boston Bruins and Ray Whitney (36 goals, 54 assists) by the San Jose Sharks.

“Those are some pretty big shoes to fill,” Anderson said. He should be up to it. Last year at New Haven of the American Hockey League, Anderson scored 41 goals, assisted on 54 others and earned league MVP honors.

Of the 15 players under contract, nine have NHL experience. Seven of the players are over 30 years old; two others are 29.

“We have an older team,” Gretzky said. “But these veteran guys will help us get to the next level. They know what it takes to win.”

Gull Notes

The Gulls open their season at home on Friday, Oct. 9, against Salt Lake. . . . The latest addition to the roster is right wing Dan Shank. Shank earlier worked out a contingency agreement with the Gulls based on whether he made the roster of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Tampa Bay let Shank go earlier this week. . . . Vice president Don Waddell is unsure of the status of Victor Kozlov, a 17-year-old Russian phenom whom the Gulls have been pursuing all summer through an intermediary. “I guess it’s a dead issue,” Waddell said, “because I haven’t heard anything all week.” The Gulls, however, will have a Russian player trying out, defender Andrei Iakovenko, 27. Also trying out will be forward Steve Smith, 29, a first-round draft choice of the Philadelphia Flyers in 1981. At 5-9, 215 pounds, Smith has a reputation that hockey has not been his No. 1 priority in the past. . . . Waddell said he expects 35 players in camp, slightly fewer than the number that showed up in 1991. . . . Besides Anderson, Gretzky and Shank, the Gulls also have under contract: forwards Peter Hankinson, Warren Rychel, Robbie Nichols, Larry Floyd, Perry Anderson, Mitch Lamoureux and Stan Drulia; defensemen Alan Hepple, Sergei Starikov, Dale Degray and Lindy Ruff; and goaltender Rick Knickle.