Standing Pat

In the Kings’ dressing room, Pat Conacher was always what you call a stand-up guy.

He’d stand up and call it like he saw it.

Conacher’s job is still as a stand-up guy--but to do it sitting down, calling it like he sees it as a rookie radio analyst for the Mighty Ducks.

Instead of telling his teammates what he thinks, he’ll tell his audience.

“I think he’ll be good,” said Dave Taylor, Conacher’s teammate on the Kings and now an assistant to the general manager with the Kings. “He’s always been a guy to speak his mind and has a real good knowledge of the game. He was a no-nonsense guy as a player. When things weren’t right in the dressing room and something had to be talked about, he wouldn’t be afraid to say so.”

Things weren’t right in 1994, when the Kings stumbled and failed to make the playoffs after reaching the Stanley Cup finals the previous season.

“We’re . . . laying down like dogs now,” Conacher said after a late-season loss. “And there’s no excuse for that.

“My God, you guys have some more pride in yourselves. Do the best you can, lose, win or draw. You don’t lay down like a dog and be beaten like a dog. You go out like a man. You don’t go out like a whipped dog. Have some guts.”

He also aimed his criticism squarely at himself, publicly taking the blame for a loss to the Rangers the season before after his mistake on a penalty kill led to the winning goal.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” was Conacher’s quote. “There’s no excuse for it.”

Young players take note of that sort of thing. Warren Rychel, now a Duck, was one.

“We had a lot of leaders on that team, but when it came time to stand up, he was one of the guys who were respected,” Rychel said. “He thinks before he speaks, and he’s always well-spoken. I think he’ll do a good job. He knows the game. He played on a Stanley Cup winner in Edmonton. If he says something versus somebody who never played the game, I’m going to think about what he said.”

Conacher’s 13-year NHL career came to an end last summer after a pack-the-boxes-again-honey season during which he was traded from the Kings to Calgary in February, then from Calgary to the Islanders in March.

He had retired and was planning to go back to school to seek a degree in oil technology, so he could work in Alberta’s petroleum industry, when the Ducks called, asking if he’d like to try his hand at radio broadcasting.

“This was totally out of the blue,” said Conacher, 37. “They said, ‘What do you think?’ It was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Conacher had never considered broadcasting, and hadn’t pursued a coaching career, either.

“I’m not a guy to walk around with a billboard, and no one asked,” he said. “I was just thinking, I’ve really got to start doing something.”

About that time, the Ducks called.

The connection that got him in the door goes back to 1979, when Conacher was a kid breaking in with New Haven, Conn. The man who ran the New Haven Coliseum was Tony Tavares, now president of Disney Sports Enterprises.

The Ducks were scrambling for a radio broadcasting team after they lost radio analyst Charlie Simmer to the Coyotes of Phoenix, where he’ll do TV, and play-by-play man Matt McConnell, who left to broadcast Pittsburgh Penguin games.

The Ducks turned to their farm team for a play-by-play man, hiring solid young announcer Brian Hamilton from Baltimore of the American Hockey League.

They thought they had a replacement for Simmer in Randy Ladouceur, the retiring defenseman and former Duck captain, but Ladouceur instead was hired as an assistant coach in Hartford.

Then Tavares thought of Conacher.

“It was important to get someone, because our radio team resigned at the last minute, so to speak,” said Tavares, who insists his penchant for hiring rookie broadcasters has nothing to do with financial considerations.

“I pride myself on running a frugal organization, but I also pay for quality people,” he said. “The reason [Conacher] came to mind is he was a great character guy his whole career, and you like to have character people in your organization, no matter what they do.”

Besides, Conacher had unwittingly auditioned.

“One time when he was with the Kings, he was scratched or injured and he was on with Nick Nickson on radio,” Tavares said. “I was listening and I was impressed.”

Conacher has a natural ability with the language and is used to speaking in front of teammates, but he still is getting a crash course in broadcasting from Hamilton, the play-by-play man.

Early on, Conacher has shown the same sort of diligence that made him the guy you’d want mucking it out in the corners or taking a crucial faceoff.

Before a Ducks’ exhibition against the Rangers in Las Vegas, he talked to Chris McSorley, who coached rookie Ruslan Salei with the Las Vegas Thunder last season. He talked to Mark Messier. He talked to Duck Coach Ron Wilson. And when bad ice caused a long stoppage of play, he faced the radio guy’s ultimate challenge, filling a delay, helping out Hamilton with a long story about Wayne Gretzky’s graciousness signing sticks for Conacher’s sons.

And naturally, he’s showing his penchant for no-nonsense commentary, quickly pointing out defenseman Nikolai Tsulygin’s error when he sent the puck up the middle, resulting in a Ranger goal.

“That’s a tough play for Nick Tsulygin. One thing he’ll learn in this league is you can’t do that and get away with it,” Conacher said.

Conacher is wading into his second career, leaving his family--his wife, Susan, and their three children--in Calgary while he sees how he likes broadcasting, and how broadcasting likes him.

After last season, he’ll be happy for one bit of news: Broadcasters don’t get traded. Conacher just laughs.

“It was a busy year,” he said.