MIGHTY DUCKS ‘93-94: PREMIERE SEASON : Yake Begins Again in Anaheim : Second Chance: With no future in Hartford, he finally has a chance to start fresh and prove the Whaler management wrong.

Unwanted in Hartford. There aren’t many ways to jump when you’re down and out as a Whaler.

Mighty Duck right wing Terry Yake was in that position more than once.

The first time the Whalers left him unprotected, in the 1992 expansion draft, the Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning passed on him.

When the 1992-93 season began, the Whalers sent him packing to their minor league affiliate in Springfield, Mass.

Only when Yake proved he was too potent an offensive force to keep in the minors, scoring eight goals with 14 assists in 16 games, did Hartford bring him back.

Yake scored 22 goals and had 31 assists in 66 games and believed he had earned his keep in Hartford.

Wrong.

The Whalers left him unprotected again. This time, the Mighty Ducks snapped him up in the ninth round of the ’93 expansion draft.

Yake watched his future change for the better via satellite at his summer home in Brandon, Manitoba. After the initial shock wore off, after he realized he’d be a Mighty Duck, he felt elation.

Finally, he has a chance to start fresh, to prove Hartford management wrong.

Now, he has a chance to become the Ducks’ first offensive star, their most gifted, creative player.

“I’ve got the opportunity to play a lot and show what I can do,” said Yake, 24. “I’ve been around long enough. I went through six coaches and three GMs in the time I was (in Hartford). It was a situation where all they had was second-hand information on me. I wasn’t the player they wanted to build their future on.”

Suffice to say, he can’t wait to play the Whalers this season.

“I’m kind of upset they’re so late in the season (Jan. 14 at Anaheim Arena and March 26 at Hartford),” he said. “Right away I wanted to check to see when we played them. There’s my chance to go there and stick it to my old team.”

Clearly, Yake is happy to be out of a no-win situation in Hartford. After all, it’s nice to be loved, even if it is on an expansion team far from the center of the hockey universe.

He feels the warm embrace of the Southern California sun and reminds himself that it will glow almost as brightly in January. No one in their right mind wears shorts in the middle of winter in Connecticut.

“Great area, great fans, great organization,” he said.

Winning games could pose a problem, but Yake isn’t overly concerned. He just wants to play. He has found a comrade in arms in Tampa Bay’s Brian Bradley.

Like Yake, Bradley had a difficult time persuading his employers he could be more valuable if they’d let him play more often. Bradley got his chance when Toronto left him unprotected and he led the expansion Lightning with 42 goals and 44 assists.

With each passing goal or assist, Bradley seemed to be saying: “I told you so.”

Certainly, Yake has the potential to score as well as Bradley did last season.

He thought he made that point clear to the Whalers last season, proving his worth beyond a shadow of a doubt. He had been a prolific scorer in the junior ranks, in the minors and thought he’d finally mastered the NHL with his 53 points last season.

The Whalers didn’t think so, but the Ducks did.

Yake now finds himself surrounded by players who have been in situations as similar and frustrating as his.

“Most of us haven’t been first-line players,” he said. “Now we have the opportunity to play a lot. For our team’s sake, I hope everybody is like Brian Bradley. We have some guys who have the potential to be like that.”

No one more so than Yake, it would appear.

He’s willing to accept the role of goal-scorer and playmaker, but isn’t about the let the weight of the job crush him.

“I’m trying not to put it all on my shoulders,” he said. “But if that’s where it falls that’s great. I don’t mind. It’s something I look forward to. I’ve set my goals a little higher this year.”

Defenseman Randy Ladouceur, a teammate in Hartford and now in Anaheim, watched Yake’s trials and tribulations from afar.

“I think he can continue to do what he did this (past) year and I think he can get better,” said Ladouceur, a 12-year NHL veteran. “He got around 20 goals and he didn’t play a full year. With more ice time and more responsibility, he’ll only get more confident.”

After he was passed over by the Senators and Lightning, then demoted to Springfield, Yake decided to come out firing.

“It’s probably a lot tougher to produce in the minors when you’ve been there for five years,” said Yake, who had bounced from the minors to Hartford and back since 1988-89.

Why was he in the minors at all?

“I like to say they mis-assessed my talent,” he said, shrugging. “They basically didn’t want me there.”

He played so well the struggling Whalers (26-52-6 last season) had to call him up.

“I managed to continue to score,” Yake said. “The points kept coming. Basically, I proved I could play in the NHL. That was the opportunity I needed. It was great.”

His skating and scoring got him noticed by the Ducks.

Now, if he can just get public address announcers and talking heads on CNN to pronounce his name correctly, Yake’s world will at last be ducky.

Don’t say Terry Yake like teriyaki, lest he conk you over the head with a rake, which rhymes with Yake. Got it? Good.

Yake said Southern California fans have been great, better than expected and certainly as passionate as in Hartford. Plus, there are more of them.

“They saw we worked hard and we saw they were excited,” Yake said after the Ducks’ exhibition opener against Pittsburgh drew 16,673. “It’s always nice to play in a full building.”