Ducks Diagnose Disease, but Cure Has Been Elusive

“Last in football, last in baseball, last in hockey . . . and we’re trying to get the Clippers, too.”

--New motto for the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, pending city council approval.

It is happening again.

The sinkhole of North American professional athletics--”Anaheim” is the local slang for it--is threatening to claim another victim before our very eyes, going for the hat trick, aiming for the clean sweep.

The Angels were lost long ago.

The Rams made it through 1989, then were never seen from again.

And now the Ducks, the Mighty Ducks, the sporting pride of Orange County, the surge of force that never dies, the figments of Michael Eisner’s imagination who made purple and jade the most happening pigments in hockey, have been fitted for cement skates and thrown into The Pond.

Sunday’s 5-3 loss to the Calgary Flames was the Ducks’ 11th in 17 tries. No team in the NHL has lost more often. Not Ottawa. Not Washington. Not Hartford. Only fellow 1993-94 classmate Florida, at 7-11-1, has lost as many games this season.

After 17 games, the Ducks have 11 points. Enough victories to count on one hand, plus one puny tie.

Across the county line, the Kings of the weekly liquidation giveaway, have three more points than that. So do the Vancouver Canucks, off to a self-proclaimed catastrophic start.

With more than a third of the 1995 mini-season complete, the Ducks are alone in last place in the Pacific Division, tied for last in the Western Conference with the Dallas Stars and tied for 24th in a 26-team hockey league.

One year after the fact, they are finally playing expansion-caliber hockey.

Who broke Ron Wilson’s team rule and informed the Ducks they are expansion-caliber hockey players?

Sunday, the Ducks produced two shots on goal in the first period. Two shots in 20 minutes. One every 10 minutes.

Is this a bus schedule or a hockey team?

In the second period, the Ducks scored twice. Tom Kurvers on the power play, Shaun Van Allen from beyond the left circle and Wilson’s knees didn’t buckle once.

Two-zero, Mighty Ducks.

Two goals are just about what the Ducks average per game this year--2.19 through the first 16.

And the Ducks still had 31 minutes to play. Thirty-one minutes to play with a two-goal lead.

Last year, the Ducks would have dropped every man standing on blades back on defense, flooded their zone, circled five white jerseys around Guy Hebert and chiseled that victory into the ice.

“Last year, it was almost impossible for us to lose a two-goal lead,” defenseman Bobby Dollas said. “A team really had to outplay us.

“But,” Dollas was sorry to add, “we don’t have the same team we had last year.”

Within 15 minutes, the Ducks’ lead was gone.

Ten minutes after that, they were down a goal.

Four minutes after that, they were down two.

This was not Mighty Duck hockey as the terrace dwellers in The Pond have come to know it. Here, the standard turnstile count of 17,174 has accepted three facets of Mighty Duck hockey as simple facts of life:

1. Stu Grimson will drop the gloves whenever given half a chance.

2. If he doesn’t, Todd Ewen will.

3. The Ducks know how to protect a two-goal lead.

They have it committed to memory, as center Bob Corkum angrily recounted for the benefit of the note-takers in the Ducks’ dressing room.

“You get over the red line,” Corkum began.

“You dump the puck in.

“You forecheck.

“Now, if the other team is going to beat you for a goal, they’ve got to go 200 feet to beat you.

“These are things you learn at the Pee-Wee level. Very basic hockey. I don’t feel we ever did it in the third period.”

Last year, Dollas suggested, “maybe we would have stopped (the Calgary comeback). But last year, we had four lines and on those four lines, everybody played the same way. Last year, goals were so rare for us, everybody knew they had to bear down to protect the lead whenever we got one.

“This year, we have a little more skill (offensively) and if we’re down a goal, it looks like we’re still capable. This team still has to distinguish the difference between playing from behind and playing with a lead. If you’re up two goals, you have to be able to protect it.”

The influx of new faces and younger faces, in Dollas’ estimation, has left the 1995 Ducks faceless for the moment.

“We’re still questioning ourselves as to what kind of hockey team we are,” Dollas said.

“This team is still trying to establish an identity.”

Actually, it has one, although no Duck cares to repeat it in public.

The ID card reads: Last Place.