As Entertainment, Mighty Ducks Are a Hit : Hockey: But after elaborate pregame show, they display their shortcomings in loss to the Red Wings.

To express his anxiety before the Mighty Ducks’ NHL debut Friday night, Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner borrowed an analogy from the business he knows best.

“I almost wish we never play a game,” he said. “It’s like a hit movie, a (Steven) Spielberg movie. Everybody says it’s going to be a hit before it comes out, and then it opens.”

Asked if his hockey team will be a mega-hit on the scale of “Jurassic Park,” Eisner smiled.

“It may not be a ‘Jurassic Park,’ ” he said. “It may be just an ‘Aladdin.’ But not a ‘Heaven’s Gate.’ And I’ve had a few of those.”

From an entertainment perspective, Friday’s game was a smash. The pregame show, whose $450,000 price tag was about the amount earned by the average NHL player last season, was a well-rehearsed display of smoke and lights and a flying duck no self-respecting mallard would acknowledge as a relative.

If only Disney could have choreographed what happened after the puck was dropped.

Without a script to re-create the happy ending of the movie that gave them their name, these Mighty Ducks were outclassed by the Detroit Red Wings. Cautioned by Coach Scotty Bowman to avoid being distracted by the pregame festivities, the Red Wings played with calm precision, scoring three times in a 20-shot barrage against Guy Hebert in the first period and cruising to a 7-2 rout that left the 17,174 fans tooting their souvenir duck calls in disappointment.

“You don’t want to be the first team to lose to an expansion team,” defenseman Paul Coffey said of the motivation behind Detroit’s formidable effort.

And Bowman made sure they wouldn’t lose, rearranging his lines to provide balance.

Although he had played Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov together throughout training camp and in Detroit’s season opener, he separated them Friday. Fedorov centered for enforcer Bob Probert and winger Ray Sheppard on a line that figured in three Detroit goals, and Yzerman usually played between Dino Ciccarelli and Keith Primeau on a line that produced two more goals.

But as much as Bowman wanted his players to control the puck, he was even more insistent that they control their emotions and not allow the Ducks to gain a boost from the crowd’s opening-night enthusiasm.

Bowman had seen Tuesday how the Dallas Stars, an old team with a new address, rode the fervor in their opener to a 6-4 victory over the Red Wings, and he recalled the debuts of last season’s expansion entries. In their first games, the Tampa Bay Lightning routed the Chicago Blackhawks, 7-3, and the Ottawa Senators upset the Montreal Canadiens, 5-3, one of only 10 victories by Ottawa all season.

The Ducks’ expansion partner, the Florida Panthers, tied the Blackhawks on Wednesday, but only after Chicago scored late in the third period.

“With the kind of guys those teams have, you’re going to get an extra effort most nights, especially at home,” said Bowman, who has coached nine teams to the Stanley Cup finals, won the Cup six times and recorded more victories than any coach in NHL history.

“They’re not down in the standings. They’re not discouraged. Until that happens, you’re going to find those kind of games very difficult games.”

It turned out to be less difficult than he had feared, but the Red Wings still respect the Ducks’ management and their decision to build a physical team.

“First of all, they’re not going to get pushed around,” said Bryan Murray, Detroit’s general manager. “They have a couple of good young goalies and a couple of good minor leaguers. I don’t know if they have enough scoring, but I don’t know that it’s possible to find scorers.

“From what I could see, there was some smart strategy by Jack (Ferreira, the Ducks’ general manager). It’s, ‘Be tough,’ and at the trade deadline, you might have a guy available that other teams going to the playoffs might want and you might get a good young player for one of those tough guys. They have some tough guys they might be able to trade later, if the opportunity comes up.”