All They’re Quacked Up to Be : Hockey: It has been a mighty marketing effort for for the Mighty Ducks.

When the Walt Disney Co.’s local TV station featured a live field report on its newscast the other night, it wasn’t an urgent update about a plane crash or an earthquake.

Instead, the reporter was excitedly describing the action at the first intrasquad scrimmage -- not even an exhibition game -- of Disney’s new hockey franchise, The Mighty Ducks.

Hardly a front-page sports story, but definitely good promotion. If the Ducks aren’t remembered for winning at first, and they surely won’t, they’ll be thought of for their Hollywood-style, in-your-face marketing and merchandising campaign.

Indeed, Disney looks at the Mighty Ducks as much as an entertainment spectacle as a pro sports team.

With only seven months separating the team’s birth from its first game against Detroit on Oct. 8, Disney has unleashed its vast corporate resources to get the team ready. The newscast plug was but one card in a deck of hype.

The company’s hugely profitable consumer products division has developed and shipped truckloads of Ducks’ merchandise. Disneyland Imagineering Group is working on pre-game and between-period entertainment, and the Disney Development Corp. designed the Ducks’ offices.

Many of Disney’s 12,000 employees are selling season tickets -- dubbed Operation Duck Hunt -- in exchange for cash prizes, and season sales have exceeded 12,000 seats. Disneyland is sponsoring a Mighty Ducks sweepstakes, Disney animators are working on the message boards, and the company’s in-house travel agency is booking team flights and hotel rooms.

More than 200 Disney stores nationwide are stocking Ducks memorabilia.

The team’s logo -- a cross between a deranged duckbill platypus and a benevolent Friday the 13th fright mask -- was ridiculed at first but is now omnipresent. Disney can’t even keep up with orders.

The burgandy, teal, silver and white Ducks merchandise has even been seen in Goteborg, Sweden, home of Ducks forward Patrik Carnback.

Right wing Todd Ewen took his two children to Disneyland not long ago, and he saw as many Ducks at the theme park as he does at practice. “I walked into the place and there were people wearing Duck caps and shirts everywhere,” he said.

Disneyland package tours will soon include Ducks tickets: 60% of all park guests come from cities with no major-league franchise in any sport. Furthermore, Disneyland closes at 6 p.m. during the winter, and is just a few miles from the Anaheim Arena, the Ducks’ shiny new home.

Disney executives realize, of course, that marketing wizardry and the team’s novelty value are worthless if the team tanks. The challenge for the Mighty Ducks is even more profound because Disney -- not counting its struggling Euro Disney theme park -- rarely fails at anything.

“This is a different team, a Disney team, and Disney always goes for No. 1,” says center Bob Corkum.

“There is a higher expectation level,” says Tony Tavares, president of Disney Sports. “ Our goal is to be competitive from the jump. But we’re no different from any other hockey team. If we don’t perform and produce, we’ll lose our fans.”

Says Disney Chairman Michael Eisner: “When you make a movie, you start off with a good story. You can have great sound, you can have great lighting, you can have great projection, you can have a great theater -- but if you don’t have an interesting story, the rest of it is meaningless. So in that sense, you have to have a professional, competitive team.”

Although last year’s hit movie “The Mighty Ducks” served more as catalyst than inspiration for the team’s formation, there are some similarities between the film’s hapless squad and the actual NHL contingent.

Like the movie’s underachievers, the real-life Mighty Ducks are a motley combination of non-performers whose credits are suspect. There is but one 20-goal scorer on the roster -- former Hartford center Terry Yake -- and heralded first-round draft pick Paul Kariya is returning to the University of Maine.

If fans are bored by losing, they may be intrigued by the mayhem: What the team lacks in skill, it certainly makes up for in muscle.

“We’re as big physically as anyone in the league, so physically we’ll have a chance to compete,” first-year coach Ron Wilson said. “Our skill level, obviously, is deficient compared to other teams. But if there’s anything we can do as well as anyone, it’s work.”

And brawl.

Although Eisner says he’s in favor of outlawing hockey fighting, his team is hardly short on pugilists. Foremost among them is Stu Grimson, the former Chicago Blackhawks enforcer claimed by Anaheim in June’s expansion draft.

In the equivalent of two full NHL seasons, the towering left winger has scored a grand total of three goals. He might have scored one or two more if he weren’t in the penalty box so much: a robust 632 minutes in penalties.

Other tough guys include forwards Jim Thomson, Todd Ewen and Robin Bawa; training camp features 17 players taller than 6 feet and weighing more than 200 pounds.

Eisner and Tavares know the media will focus on whatever malfeasance the Ducks commit on the ice, just because they’re Disney’s team.

“There’s no doubt in my mind they will do it,” Tavares says. “But it’s all part of the risk Disney took when they got into hockey.”

“I can’t live or die by every line in every movie, but you can set an agenda and hope that people generally follow it,” Eisner says. He hopes players with reputations for aggressive play will learn to contribute offensively.

“We want the players to actually get out there and play hockey,” Eisner says. And if they turn out to be less than that, I would be very much inclined not to have them part of our team.”

There will be ample entertainment at Ducks games, even if it’s not supplied by the team.

Unlike almost every other NHL franchise, the Ducks will use two Zambonis to clean the ice, allowing for more between-period entertainment. As opposed to the mangy mascot of the Los Angeles Kings, the Ducks promise a distinctive, flying alternative (but not Tinkerbell). The Anaheim Arena will be lighted theatrically, not with simple floodlights.

There will be dancing cheerleaders, called the Decoys. Even the organist will be a character, Disney says, wandering among the fans with a remote keyboard.

“We’re looking at it in the rock concert, showmanship, Disney-on-Ice way, rather than a sporting event,” Eisner says.

“You can’t control everything that goes on on the ice,” says sales and marketing vice president Ken Wilson. “But you can control everything off the ice. We know winning really adds to the enjoyment, but there are other things.”

Eisner, whose hands-on involvement in a variety of Disney enterprises has brought the company huge profits, says he’s not going to become hockey’s answer to George Steinbrenner.

“As far as what the players do, and who plays what position, and who makes the starting lineup -- I’m controlling myself,” he says, promising not to meddle.

“At least, not for a while.”