Eisner Rules Anonymous Roost

One by one, the names went up on the big board. Hebert, Healy, Tugnutt, Kasatonov, Hill, Houlder . . . all the way until the 24-man roster for the Mighty Obscure Ducks of Anaheim had been fully stocked.

Michael Eisner looked over his $50-million investment and was asked about details, details.

“So, have you heard of any of these guys?”

“I’m familiar with players who played with the Kings,” Eisner said brightly.

That’s two--left wing Lonnie Loach and right wing Jim Thomson. The 21st and 22nd men who would be Ducks. Not quite Gretzky and Robitaille, but not quite Trevor Halverson and Robin Bawa, either.

“And Glenn Healy,” Eisner was happy to add. “I watched him when he played for the Kings. It seemed like he was a good player in the playoffs this year.”

Eisner looked over the board one more time, to little avail.

“That’s about the extent of my knowledge.”

Today, Eisner is no different than 99.9% of the rest of us, give or take a couple hundred million dollars. Who are those duck-masked men? Well, there’s a Steven King, except this one never wrote a book about a crazed car that mows down civilians because it had a bad petrol day. And there’s this Guy, Hebert, except he never threw a pass for the New Orleans Saints.

About as close as the Ducks get to a big name is Joe Sacco. Joe Sacco, Joe Sakic, what’s one little syllable?

Aside from 42 goals and 53 assists, nothing, really.

Beyond that, one massive sea of anonymous vowels and consonants stared Eisner in the face. Not that Eisner seemed to mind. He’d just witnessed Thursday’s NHL expansion draft from the best seat in the house--of course, he paid for it--swapping arched eyebrows and knowing nods with team President Tony Tavares and General Manager Jack Ferreira at the Ducks’ draft table.

He said he had an excellent time.

“I was interested in the process, the strategy,” Eisner said. Mostly, he sat there “trying to figure out what was going on--what those pieces of paper being passed around meant, how some team could ask us about a trade before we even had a single player . . .

“I thought it was interesting that our list was quite different than (the Florida Panthers’) list. They were picking names off the bottom of our list and, obviously, we were picking names off the bottom of theirs.”

Who had the better list?

Check back in 1996-97.

Assembling a hockey team, from the bottom of the NHL’s barrel, is curious work, Eisner observed, nothing at all like casting a movie or constructing a theme park.

“In Hollywood,” Eisner said, “you don’t draft Robert Redford and Tom Cruise. You don’t have actors playing out their option. And if you find a director in Kansas City, you don’t put him in a draft and lose him to MGM.”

No, in Hollywood you pay millions upon millions for the top talent, a concept the Ducks avoided altogether Thursday. “Cheap, cheap,” was the noise emanating from the Ducks’ draft table, with 17 of 24 draftees making $250,000 or less per year. Half the roster earned less than $200,000 last season.

“We will be profitable from Day 1,” Eisner declared, and no one listening dared doubt him.

When your entire player payroll is roughly $5.5 million, or half a million less than Mario Lemieux’s annual salary, and you have Orange County panting to pay through its nose for tickets, a profit can be reasonably predicted.

“This is not an ego exercise for us, this is a business investment,” Eisner maintained. “Budget is a factor in every TV show and every movie project we’ve ever undertaken. The economics here, I feel, are consistent with other Disney enterprises.”

Disneythink is nothing if not pragmatic. Consider these Ducks and consider these goals:

Black Ink--attainable by Day 1.

Stanley Cup--attainable by Day 7,300. Maybe.

Disneythink says, “Where’s the choice?”

Upon in-depth research, it was learned that the treacly sweet Disney empire had acquired some unsavory characters this draft day. Troy Loney, the third forward taken by the Ducks, has averaged 133 penalty minutes per NHL season. Stu Grimson, selected in the next round, is 6-5, 227 pounds and known affectionately in Chicago as “The Grim Reaper.” Ex-King Thomson is an unrepentant thug--and after being drafted by his third expansion team in three years, you know he has to be angry.

Eisner was asked if he had a problem with any of this.

“I was told we took skilled hockey players,” he said. “If we have to take a couple tough players to take care of our skilled players, that’s in line with our philosophy.

“Just last week, there was a commercial with a well-known player who says, ‘I’m going to so-and-so’ and it wasn’t Disneyland. That’s copyright infringement and we had to go to court over it.

“Disney can be tough when it has to be.”

Still, Ferreira and the Ducks’ draft team decided to consult Eisner before picking one player who carries a portfolio quite unlike the Little Mermaid’s.

“They told me he might not be a model citizen in the locker room,” Eisner. “I said that if he can play, don’t leave him on the side for that. We had enough players already who fit the Disney image.”

Is Orange County ready for Goontown?

It is certainly ready for hockey, given the stampede to the season-ticket window. Thursday’s draft was a success, Eisner proclaimed, because “we now have a team of human beings, who will be skating in front of 17,000 fans in Orange County.”

With names on the backs of the uniforms for easy identification. Eisner promises.