Quick-Change Artists Strike

There is no Bryan Harvey in this expansion draft.

There isn’t even a Dmitri Kvartalnov, a late-breaking development that had the hallways of the Loews Concorde buzzing Wednesday afternoon, which tells you everything you need to know about this expansion draft.

When the National Hockey League expands, every three months or so, it throws all the big names on the table. Kvartalnov. Suomalainen. Cheveldayoff. Big names, long names, names with many vowels.

More vowels than goals, in most cases. Kvartalnov, a 27-year-old left winger with the Boston Bruins, had been the marquee attraction on the feeder board this week in Quebec City--a 30-goal scorer, of all things, cast adrift in a sea of 33-year-old checking centers and stay-at-home, stay-off-the-scoreboard, stay-close-to-the-oxygen-tank defensemen.

Kvartalnov was an anomaly, all right. So much so that before the Mighty Ducks and Florida Panthers could finish their double takes, he was gone, recalled by the Bruins in the nick of time, courtesy of a nifty assist by league president Gil Stein.

Apparently, the media tumult got the best of Bruin general manager Harry Sinden, or at least set him to thinking. Initially, Sinden fielded the how-could-you questions by trashing Kvartalnov, snidely dismissing him as half a player, a defensive sieve, the ice equivalent to a basketball player “standing under the offensive basket for the whole game.”

Then Sinden started inspecting the mock drafts and reading about how the Ducks and the Panthers were planning to squeeze all those letters onto the first jersey they could find. Hmmm. Maybe Harry had been a bit rash. Maybe 12 months was too soon to give up on a player who had been the 16th selection in the 1992 amateur draft.

Wednesday, Sinden made an appeal to Stein, asking for an exemption on Kvartalnov. Grounds: Kvartalnov did not have a professional contract when he played for San Diego during the 1991-92 season, making him a first-year pro, rather than a second-year pro. All first-year pros are exempt in this expansion draft.

Stein bought Sinden’s pitch--”An administrative error,” Stein said--and awarded Kvartalnov sanctuary. Memo to the Ducks and Panthers: This is standard operating procedure for the NHL, still the mom-n-pop liquor store of sports leagues.

Don’t like that league directive?

Wait an hour. It’ll change.

In this league, they make ‘em up as they go along. If the Ducks don’t like it, it’s too late to back out now. The expansion repechage will be held today, beginning at 11:30 a.m. (PDT), and before dusk, the Ducks will have 24 used players to call their own, whether they like them or not.

Who will be the first Mighty Duck? Certainly, a momentous occasion is upon us, and the short list is down to a half-dozen names, all of them goaltenders, because in the NHL, expansion teams stock their rosters by position--first goalies, then defensemen, then forwards.

Unless the NHL changes its mind between now and 11:30, of course.

The first pick will be a goaltender from Vancouver, either John Vanbiesbrouck or Kay Whitmore. We still don’t know in which order Anaheim and Florida will draft, because the NHL figured it wouldn’t bother flipping the coin until the last conceivable second.

So, the tension builds.

If Florida wins the flip, it will draft Vanbiesbrouck, the former Ranger all-star and 1986 Vezina Trophy winner. Vanbiesbrouck’s old coach, Roger Neilson, is now with the Panthers and Wednesday night, he informed the goalie that a reunion is in the works if the coin bounces properly.

If the Ducks win the flip, the selection will be Vanbiesbrouck or Whitmore. Vanbiesbrouck is clearly the star of this draft, but Anaheim General Manager Jack Ferreira is big on Whitmore for three reasons--he’s younger than Vanbiesbrouck (26 to 29), he’s coming off a better season (18-8-4 to 20-18-7) and, crucially, he’s cheaper ($375,000 to $1.15 million).

Even with Disney signing the checks, money does the Duck walk.

If the Ducks lose the flip, Daren Puppa and his leather glove of renown, the Puppa Scoopa, loom large. Puppa led the NHL in victories in 1990 when he played for Buffalo and went 17-7-4 last season, combined, for Buffalo and Toronto.

And if not Puppa, there are two other names in the pool just waiting for Disneyization: Don Beaupre of Washington and Darcy Wakaluk of Dallas. Donald the Duck or Duck Wakaluk--the choice is Ferreira’s.

(In a related, rather unfortunate development, Donald Dufresne, Dallas Drake and Gerald Diduck were all protected by their current teams.)

After the goalies go, there won’t be much.

Thirty-goal scorers?

Kvartalnov was the one and only, and he has been whisked away.

Twenty-goal scorers?

Excluding free agents, there are just three--Tampa Bay’s Chris Kontos, gunning to be picked in back-to-back expansion drafts; Chicago’s Michel Goulet, who lugs a $600,000 salary with him, and Hartford’s Terry Yake, who is not an Oriental meat dish, but, at 24 and $190,000 per year, just might be the Perfect Expansion Player.

He is young and he is cheap.

He is unknown and unprotected.

Some time today, he will be a Mighty Duck or a Panther, barring another administrative error.