Gorgone Has History of Broken Barriers : Hockey: Job as Ducks’ scouting coordinator makes her a pioneer for women in the NHL.

Angela Gorgone knew she wanted to be involved in the NHL from the time she was 6, but she couldn’t have imagined her name would be in New York newspaper stories about the Rangers and Islanders only a decade later.

Gorgone, then 16, was sitting along the glass at Nassau Coliseum--”February 18, 1984, I’ll never forget it,”--when a collision along the boards shattered the glass. She was showered with shards that shredded her pants and cut her tennis shoes. Reaching up, she felt blood on the back of her head.

“I remember looking up and there was Donny Maloney and Robbie Ftorek”--players then, one later to become general manager of the Islanders and the other a coach of the Kings. That night, Gorgone was a local TV news star, and news of her injuries was reported along with the game in the papers the next day. “My name’s right there in the article with Bryan Trottier,” she said. “That was a thrill.” Months later, a junior high friend told her she’d been on “TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes.” “Very embarrassing,” Gorgone said.

Another decade later, Gorgone’s name appears in the paper for what she does. At 27, she has been the Mighty Ducks’ scouting coordinator for two years and is the only woman in the NHL with that title. There are women as public relations directors in the NHL, women as legal counsel, women on the board of directors. Until her recent resignation, Susie Mathieu was a vice president of the St. Louis Blues, overseeing communications. Lisa Seltzer is director of broadcasting for the Ducks.

But Gorgone works for the team in hockey operations, and that is unusual. When the San Jose Sharks hired Deborah Wright as a part-time scout in 1992, making her the first woman scout in the NHL, Gorgone saved the articles. “Not that I was saying I wanted to be a scout or anything, but she was in the hockey end of it,” Gorgone said.

As scouting coordinator, Gorgone is focused on the draft much of the year. Scouts file reports to her by computer modem, and she updates the database, sending up-to-date compilations on hundreds of players back to each scout by modem every week. In her office, she posts the statistics of every league you can imagine, updated weekly--Canadian juniors, U.S. colleges and the pros in Russia, Sweden and the Czech Republic.

That’s one part of her job. Another is keeping statistics by computer during Duck games, focusing on ice time for every player on both teams, a task virtually impossible by hand. Between periods, she gives assistant coach Tim Army a detailed printout on numbers of shifts and minutes and special teams play for every player.

Duck General Manager Jack Ferreira hired Gorgone at the team’s inception after getting to know her when she worked for the New Jersey Devils. Gorgone had turned her academic internship as a Bowling Green State University sports management major into a full-time position as a hockey assistant.

Ferreira saw her during his visits to the press box as a scout for the Rangers and Montreal, and he heard scouts talk about her ability to simplify their work with computers.

“I can see her eventually moving up into a more administrative position, doing statistical work for arbitration and contract negotiations,” Ferreira said. “I can see her getting involved in helping prepare briefs for arbitration, doing research on individual contracts to see what helps us and what hurts us.”

During the NHL lockout last winter, Ferreira looked for ways for Gorgone to make good use of her extra time, sending her to scout the Ducks’ prospects in San Diego.

“That way she’d be looking at things a little differently than just what happened. I would ask who played well, why, what did they do. She’s used to seeing scouting reports so she knows what to look for. You don’t just say, ‘He played well,’ you say he did this or that, he was involved or wasn’t.”

David McNab, the Ducks’ director of player personnel--and son of Max McNab, one of the people who helped Gorgone get her start with the Devils--praises Gorgone’s computer skills, knowledge of the game and her work ethic.

“Maybe she could be the first woman in the management end in some capacity, or an assistant GM,” he said. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. She works hard enough at it. Contracts are getting more and more complex, and there’s so much analysis of other contracts.”

It’s a competitive business, and hockey can be merciless off the ice, too--as Gorgone learned at 16. A Ranger fan who lived on Long Island, she was in enemy territory at Nassau Coliseum the night the glass shattered.

“I took abuse walking up the aisle,” she said. “I’m 16 years old, I’m bleeding, and all I hear is, ‘That’s what you get, you deserve it for being a Ranger fan.’ ”