Team Effort Helps Tavares Get Things Done : Hockey: Building the expansion Mighty Ducks is a lot easier with Disney on his side.

Tony Tavares is at a loss for words when friends ask how he likes living in Southern California. How would the transplanted Easterner know? Since Tavares began putting the NHL expansion Mighty Ducks together in March, the team president has hardly seen Southern California.

“There are many nights where we’ll finish our discussion, I’ll look up, and it’s like quarter to 10, and I don’t know where the day went,” said Tavares, 43. “There’s so much to do, so many decisions to make.”

When you’re trying to do what skeptics said was impossible, what some in the business thought you were crazy for trying, there isn’t much time to go to the beach, shop the malls or take long bike rides.

Tavares’ task has been to build a hockey organization from scratch--hire front office and coaching staffs, oversee design of the team’s crest and uniforms, develop a marketing strategy, secure radio and television contracts and hire announcers, sell advertising packages and season tickets, purchase hockey and training room equipment, furnish locker rooms . . .

Oh, and one other minor detail--acquire a few dozen hockey players, sign them to contracts and put a team on the ice this October.

In the NHL’s previous wave of expansion, the San Jose Sharks had about 1 1/2 years between the dates of their inception and first game. The Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning had almost two years to prepare.

The Mighty Ducks have seven months.

“Many people said this couldn’t physically be done, and if it could, you’d never be able to do it right--you’d have major problems,” Tavares said. “It’s certainly a challenge, but if anyone could pull it off, it’s Disney.”

That’s Tavares’ giant ace in the hole. The Walt Disney Co., which owns the Mighty Ducks, has played an integral role in the team’s development, and taken a load off the hockey staff in the process.

Tavares did not have to reach outside the company to have the team’s logo and uniforms designed. The Disney merchandise machine was busy cranking out Mighty Ducks items long before Tavares felt he found the right merchandise manager, Shelley Gartner, who was hired away from the Phoenix Roadrunners of the International Hockey League.

The Disney animation department has helped produce material for Anaheim Arena’s four-color message boards. Disney’s in-house travel agency has handled travel arrangements for team personnel and is looking into air fares and reservations for 1993-94 trips. The Disney Development Corp. designed blueprints for the Mighty Ducks’ arena offices and locker room and secured contractors for the job. All Tavares had to do was approve final plans.

“Is Disney so unique they’re the only ones who could pull this off?” Tavares said. “No. Blockbuster is going to do it (with the Florida Panthers), too. But what are the advantages? You have something like 12,000 employees at Disneyland and another 13,000 at the studio. You have a sheer numbers base that can help you with any kind of problem you have.”

But even with Disney’s help, Tavares estimates most Mighty Ducks front office employees have been working six days a week, 12 hours a day, since the team announced March 1 that it would begin play in October.

“If anything, I’ve erred on the side of conservatism,” said Tavares, who spent 11 years as chief executive officer of Philadelphia-based Spectacor Management Group, which manages more than 40 sports facilities around the world. “These people here are really cranking.”

Decisions, decisions. Every day, it seems, Tavares makes a dozen of them. In addition to the major tasks, there are so many other details that must be addressed.

Player trades, free-agent signings, securing minor league affiliates and stocking those teams with players. Hiring equipment managers, trainers, video people, television producers, scouts, public relations people, accountants. Setting up temporary office space on the fifth floor of the Hyatt Alicante building in Anaheim.

“We were like Pac-men munching space . . . because we keep hiring people,” said Tavares, whose staff now numbers 42. “When we came in, we said we’d need maybe 1,000 square feet of office space. By the time we moved out (last Friday), we were at about 10,000 square feet.”

Among the other tasks: stocking training rooms with medical supplies, developing merchandise lines, negotiating merchandise deals with the league, chasing down people believed to be selling counterfeit Mighty Ducks T-shirts.

Plus: selling luxury boxes, printing tickets, printing mail-order catalogues, establishing team rules and regulations, organizing training camp, hiring and training off-ice officials and stat crews, conceiving a mascot--Yes, the Mighty Ducks will have one.

“The list goes on and on and on and on,” Tavares said. “More than ever, when building a franchise, you have to rely on your instincts. You’re forced to make quick, sometimes rash, decisions. But my whole life, I’ve been a guy who made instinctive decisions and trusted my gut senses.”

Tavares’ biggest priorities now are securing a radio station that will broadcast Mighty Ducks’ games, developing pregame, between-period and during-game entertainment, planning opening-night festivities, selling season tickets--yes, there are more available--and that one prickly thorn lurking just outside the doors of palatial new Anaheim Arena:

The parking lot.

“For the most part, things are under control,” Tavares said. “But you know what my biggest fear is? The parking and traffic issue at (the arena). There are frankly just not enough parking spaces for 17,250 people.

“I have pledged to myself that we are going to have it resolved before the season. I don’t know how it’s going to be done, but it will be done. I’ve lost sleep over that, because it’s not something that is in my total control. It requires cooperation from (arena operators) Ogden and the city (Anaheim).”

Tavares is doing his homework. With a traffic consultant and Disney parking consultant, Tavares went up in a helicopter during a recent Saturday night arena event and studied traffic flow. The team has made several recommendations Tavares believes will eliminate most of the problems.

The Mighty Ducks will also plan at least two dry runs of hockey events before the Oct. 8 season opener against the Detroit Red Wings. They’ll stage intrasquad games with full-blown crowds, ushers, ticket takers, stat crews, scoreboards operating, television cameras rolling.

“We will not leave anything to chance,” Tavares said. “When I opened arenas (with Spectacor), my goal was zero defects. I get fanatical about stuff like that. I want it to seem like the day you go in there, it seems we’ve been doing this for 100 years.”

That’s why Tavares has been working such long hours. He has high expectations for the Mighty Ducks--”I want us to be America’s team, what the Dallas Cowboys are to football,” he said--and expects nothing short of perfection in areas he can control.

But the long days and many obstacles have hardly overwhelmed the executive.

“I’m energized,” Tavares said. “I’ve always worked long hours. The key for me is am I having fun? Right now, I’m having a great time, because it’s not like work.”