The First Step : The Mighty Ducks Hoping Energy and Enthusiasm Count for Something

The Mighty Ducks, the team that banned the E-word (shh, it’s expansion) , still have to live through their first season in the NHL.

And though Coach Ron Wilson and his players say they’re approaching it with other E-words, like energy and enthusiasm, they’re not naive. It’s going to seem excruciating at times, but why discuss it?

Wilson and General Manager Jack Ferreira, an expansion veteran after starting the San Jose franchise in 1991, are trying to put a positive spin on the team’s first season without being Pollyannas about it.

“Every night, you want to go in with the idea that you’re going to win,” Ferreira said, even though he knows that even 15-20 victories will make a successful year. “We’ll prepare every night to try to be competitive.”

The Ducks, a team light on scorers and heavy on heavies, namely Stu Grimson and Todd Ewen, were competitive during the exhibition season, going 2-2-1 with three overtime games. They kept games close with grinding physical play, persistent forechecking and good goaltending. But in those five games, they scored only 12 goals.

Of course, when the season starts Friday against Detroit at Anaheim Arena, the Ducks will have to scrap for every victory.

“You can never predict wins and losses, but it’s going to be better than I hoped in terms of how well we’re playing right now,” Wilson said. “I think we’re going to keep improving. I think we’ll be very competitive.”

Problem is, by expansion standards, a competitive game often means a one-goal loss.

“One thing we’re going to do, I know, is we’re going to work hard every night,” said defenseman Randy Ladouceur, one of the team’s veterans. “A lot of nights, that might be enough to win some games. We have to go get the puck in the corners and use what we have, which is size and strength.”

The nightmare 24-point seasons turned in by Ottawa and San Jose last season are the marks to avoid--along with the Washington Capitals’ eight-victory season in 1974-75, the worst in NHL history by a team that played at least 70 games.

Tampa Bay’s 23 victories and 53 points last season are the other end of the spectrum.

“You set your sights on Tampa Bay, or even more, that’s the way I look at it,” Wilson said.

Goaltending and defense will have to be the team’s strengths because the forwards are mostly former third-or fourth-liners or minor league stars still trying to show they belong in the NHL. And if preseason play is any indication, the penalty-killing units had better be good, too, because this team might lead the league in penalties.

The closest player the Ducks have to an offensive star is Terry Yake, 24, a right winger who scored 22 goals in 66 games with Hartford last season. He is likely to play on a line with center Anatoli Semenov, who contributed to Pavel Bure’s 110-point total in Vancouver last season.

The team could get a infusion of offensive talent late in the season if first-round draft choice Paul Kariya, the U.S. college player of the year at Maine last season, joins the team after playing for the Canada in the Olympics.

Other than that, Wilson must look to players with plenty left to prove--wingers Tim Sweeney and Joe Sacco, two 1992 U.S. Olympic team members who stood out in the exhibition season; center Shaun Van Allen, a two-time 100-point scorer in the minors who has yet to break through in the NHL, and right wing Steven King, whom Ferreira made the Ducks’ first forward pick in the expansion draft. Center Patrik Carnback, acquired from Montreal with Ewen in the franchise’s first trade, also shows promise.

Ewen, Grimson, Troy Loney and former King Jim Thomson are assigned to provide the protection and go in the corners for the puck.

“Up front, we have pretty much what I thought we’d have,” Ferreira said. “We can skate, we can be competitive. We’ve got some guys who can score. It’s more a matter of whether they will do it at this level.”

On the nights the Ducks win, it figures to start with the man in the net. Guy Hebert and Ron Tugnutt are supposed to share the goaltender’s job because Wilson believes that it’s too much to ask one man to face all the rubber expected to bombard a first-year team.

“If we want to win, we’re going to have to stop the puck and win 4-3, 3-2,” Hebert said.

The defense in front of Hebert and Tugnutt, anchored by Alexei Kasatonov, the former Central Red Army player who spent three seasons with the New Jersey Devils, must keep the scoring chances from coming in swarms. His help will come from Ladouceur and Sean Hill, 23, who was one of the young players stuck in Montreal’s deep stack of defensemen last year. Bill Houlder, Mark Ferner and Bobby Dollas were all in the minors last year.

Observers will wait for the first victory, even the first tie, for indications of how this team will do. Ferreira takes a different view.

“You look for signs,” he said. “The other night against the Islanders, we were putting pressure on them and they were turning the puck over. Those are encouraging things.”