Two Duck Trades Add Speed, Youth

The Mighty Ducks shuffled their roster in preparation for the season by trading three players Tuesday, including defenseman Jason York and center Shaun Van Allen.

York and Van Allen were sent to Ottawa for forward Ted Drury and the rights to prospect Marc Moro, a defenseman. In another move, the Ducks traded former King Kevin Brown, a forward who appeared to be headed for the minors, to Hartford for the rights to center Espen Knutsen, who is playing in Sweden.

By trading York, 26, one of the team’s few experienced defensemen, the Ducks indicated they will go with a younger group. First-round pick Ruslan Salei, 21, will make the team as an extra defenseman, and Nikolai Tsulygin, 21, probably will, too. The performance of Adrian Plavsic, 26, convinced the team York was expandable.

Drury, 25, is a speedy two-way forward who had 16 points in 42 games for Ottawa last season before breaking his wrist. Moro, a physical defenseman who will play junior hockey this season, was the 27th pick overall in the 1995 draft.

“[Drury] fills a need we had and we have some young guys on defense who might not be where Jason is right now, but they will be,” General Manager Jack Ferreira said. “Van Allen and York played extremely well for us, but we needed another skilled forward with speed.”

Coach Ron Wilson was considering putting Drury on a line with center Steve Rucchin and right wing Valeri Karpov. Joe Sacco has played on that line, but if Paul Kariya isn’t ready to start the season because of lingering problems from an abdominal muscle injury, Wilson might put Sacco on the first line with Jari Kurri and Teemu Selanne.

The departure of Van Allen, 29, leaves only four players from the franchise’s original roster--Bobby Dollas, Guy Hebert, Sacco and Garry Valk.

“I’ll always be grateful to Anaheim for giving me my first real good shot. Now I’m on to Ottawa,” said Van Allen, a dependable, grinding forward for three seasons who was being pushed out of the lineup by such players as Alex Hicks and J.F. Jomphe. “I was a little concerned around wavier time. I didn’t know what the situation might be. I was rolling with the punches.”

Van Allen and York will both play larger roles for the Senators, whose general manager is Pierre Gauthier, formerly the Ducks’ assistant general manager.

“I’m from Ottawa, that’s my hometown, so it’s good in that sense,” York said. “But I made a lot of friends here and it’s disappointing that way. I thought I was a big part of the team last year.”

Drury, a second-round pick in 1989 by the Calgary Flames from Harvard, played for the U.S. Olympic teams in 1992 and ’94. He has 18 goals and 43 points in 126 NHL games for Calgary, Hartford and Ottawa.

“Definitely, I was surprised,” Drury said. “But I’m very excited. Pierre told me it’s a great organization and everything I hear is they’re very professional.

“I enjoyed my time [in Ottawa] and it seems like things are headed in the right direction. It seems like the Ducks are headed in the same kind of direction, too.”