Mighty Ducks Expand Hit Parade in Florida : Hockey: They finally pick on someone their own size in handing Tampa Bay a 4-1 defeat.

It took almost half a season and nine tries, but the Mighty Ducks finally won a game against one of the NHL’s other recent expansion teams Sunday, beating Tampa Bay, 4-1.

The parade will be this afternoon.

Actually, the parade was already scheduled--the Disney-owned Ducks will be waving at tourists at Disney’s MGM Studios attraction here today in their third parade of the season.

This, for a 15-24-2 expansion team.

“After a win like tonight, it will certainly be a little easier to sit there not having lost three in a row, or four out of five or whatever it would be, and have a parade, when usually they’re reserved for championship teams,” Coach Ron Wilson said.

Usually.

“We have more parades than the Montreal Canadiens,” said General Manager Jack Ferreira, whose team rode Disneyland floats twice before they even played a game.

The Ducks’ performance against the Lightning before 10,871 in one of five “home” games Tampa Bay is playing at Orlando Arena, was not aesthetically pleasing.

“That was the worst we played all year, by a mile, but we won,” Wilson said. “I guess we have to play lousy against the new teams and we’ll win, instead of playing good and losing.”

Tampa Bay Coach Terry Crisp couldn’t find much positive in his team’s performance, after the Lighting allowed Garry Valk to score the eventual game-winning goal with the Ducks shorthanded at 14:03 of the third off an assist from Bob Corkum.

The Lighting has given up an NHL-worst 14 shorthanded goals, and is only plus-11 on its own power play, with 25 goals.

“If we don’t make the ‘93-’94 blooper tape at least 16 times, nobody will,” Crisp said. “They’ll be able to sell a lot of tapes to us, because we’ll be on it.”

Goaltender Ron Tugnutt had the game’s best performance, stopping 31 shots and bidding for his second shutout in three starts until Chris Joseph scored on a power play with 5:57 to play.

“When we were ahead 2-0, at that time I was thinking shutout,” Tugnutt said. “I wanted it, but the first most important thing is the win, and that’s what we got.”

Terry Yake gave the Ducks some breathing room with a 3-1 lead at 17:49 of the third when he poke-checked the puck away from Adam Creighton in the neutral zone and slapped it home from the top of the right circle for his 15th goal.

Peter Douris added an empty-netter with 40 seconds left after Crisp pulled goalie Daren Puppa for an extra attacker. Defenseman David Williams opened the Ducks’ scoring on a first-period rebound.

Before Sunday, the Ducks were 0-8 against Florida, Tampa Bay, Ottawa and San Jose and 14-16-2 against the established teams.

“I don’t know what the goal differential was in those other games, they could have gone either way,” Valk said. “You know, Wilson was a little growly tonight, in between each period. He really wanted this one bad and I think that’s why the boys came out and played with a little more aggressiveness than we usually do.”

Valk had motivation of his own. When the teams played at Anaheim Arena on Dec. 5, he was cross-checked into the boards from behind by Tampa Bay’s Joe Reekie and knocked cold, suffering a concussion that caused him to miss five of the next seven games.

“He did what I felt was a cheap shot, but you know, it happens to everybody I guess,” said Valk, whose goal was his first since the injury. “A few guys said, you know, if you get a chance, maybe have a little talk with him. For me the number one thing was to win this game, try to get myself going, try to get the team going. If it would have come to that, I would have done it, but we had a lot of guys stepping forward tonight.”