MIGHTY DUCK NOTEBOOK / ROBYN NORWOOD : King Still Waiting for Recall to Anaheim

The phone has been ringing off the hook in Baltimore. The calls from Anaheim have come for Alex Hicks, Viacheslav Butsayev, Dwayne Norris, Sean Pronger. None of them were Ducks a year ago. All of them are in the NHL now.

Chances are Mike Maneluk or J.F. Jomphe is next, as the Mighty Ducks’ injury epidemic sends General Manager Jack Ferreira to the phone again.

As of Friday night, Steven King was still waiting.

King, the first forward chosen by the Ducks in the 1993 expansion draft, is trying to get back to the NHL after reconstructive surgery on both shoulders. But he has been passed over four times.

“He hasn’t been the best player there,” Ferreira said.

“It’s going OK,” said King, who leads the Bandits, Ducks’ AHL affiliate, with 11 goals in 21 games but has a plus-minus rating of minus-8.

Not being among the first call-ups was “a little surprising” King said from the team’s hotel in Binghamton, N.Y. “But obviously they know what they’re doing. While I’m here I have to play well, for as long as it takes.

“After being off a year and a half, I have to relearn everything about the game. It’s a long road.”

His shoulders, he said, are fine. His timing isn’t.

“He’s just getting his timing back,” said Pronger, who played alongside King. “I see him getting frustrated a lot. He’s always getting really mad at himself. He looks like he wants to kill himself sometimes. But he had surgery on both shoulders. It’s going to take time.”

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The face is familiar: Pronger, who has played the last two games, is the older brother of St. Louis defenseman Chris Pronger, 21, the second pick in the 1993 draft.

“Everybody calls me Chris,” said Sean, 23. “There was a linesman in the AHL calling me Chris. And when I reported to Anaheim for training camp, they had me listed for my medical as Chris.”

You can bet that the guy who cuts the Ducks’ paychecks wouldn’t make that mistake.

Unlike his younger brother, Sean wasn’t a hot prospect as a youngster and he left Dryden, Ontario, to play college hockey at Bowling Green for four years. Drafted in the third round by Vancouver after his freshman year, Pronger was signed by the Ducks as a free agent last February and played in the minors.

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The cast is off Valeri Karpov’s right wrist and he might return weeks earlier than expected--probably reaching his goal to be back by Jan. 1.

He is on the trip with the team and has begun skating and getting joint massage to recover the range of motion in his wrist.

Karpov was hurt at Colorado on Oct. 23, and was projected to be out until perhaps mid-January--in a cast for six to eight weeks, then missing another month for rehabilitation. Instead, the cast was removed Wednesday after five weeks, and team physician Craig Milhouse said the bones have healed well.

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Rookie center Chad Kilger, 19, turned down an invitation to play for Canada in the World Junior Championships later this month in Boston.

“I told them I came to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim because I want to play here,” said Kilger, who would have given the idea stronger consideration if he had become a regular scratch. “I want to be here unless [Duck management] feels it would help my development to go play.”

General Manager Jack Ferreira had been somewhat open to the idea of Kilger playing in Boston, but the Ducks’ recent injury trouble changed that.