He’s Now a Presence Behind Bench

It happens less and less, but there are moments when Randy Ladouceur can’t help it. He misses playing the game.

“The first exhibition game, I felt like jumping over the boards and taking a shift,” Ladouceur said. “I don’t know how I would have fared in my suit, though.”

One of the original Ducks and the team’s captain the last two seasons, Ladouceur became an assistant coach for the Hartford Whalers this season after the Ducks chose not to re-sign him at age 36, with 930 games of NHL mileage on legs that were never that spry in the first place.

But if Ladouceur had the urge to jump on the ice Thursday night, the Ducks probably wouldn’t have minded handing him a uniform and a helmet.

Not that he could solve the Ducks’ troubles--after all, Ladouceur wasn’t even in the lineup at the end of last season, pushed aside by youngsters Darren Van Impe and Jason Marshall.

Just for a few games, though, wouldn’t it be good to see that heady, lumbering, predictable defenseman in front of the net?

“He was a very steady type of guy, and I think [the organization] really banked on how we finished last year defensively,” said defenseman Bobby Dollas, another original Duck. “But I said at the beginning of the season, anybody could have played the last 20 games for us last year, at any position. We were on that much of a roll. Now it’s 80 games. We’ll see who can play.”

Interestingly, one of Ladouceur’s jobs with the Whalers is to help break down video of the opponents’ last few games, so he has been analyzing the Ducks’ troubles.

“I think teams always go through times like that,” he said. “There are a lot of new faces in the lineup again. Certainly on the blue line there are some inexperienced guys.

“They’re going to be good players, but they have to learn, and that takes time. Look at the first-round pick, [Ruslan] Salei, he looks like he has all the tools. He makes some mistakes, but young guys go through that. You’ve got to expect that. Nik Tsulygin, he was playing his first NHL game against Philadelphia and he didn’t do bad. You also have new guys up front in Jari Kurri, Ted Drury, Kevin Todd.

“The thing I did notice in the Philly game was they worked hard.”

And one other thing. “Paul, that guy,” Ladouceur said with a laugh, referring to the absence of injured 50-goal scorer Paul Kariya. “I imagine that’s weighing on them quite a bit.”

What-ifs aren’t weighing on Ladouceur’s mind.

“I think it has turned out well with the opportunity here,” he said. “The timing was right for me. I had a good career. I’m not going to look back and think I didn’t get 1,000 games. I could have played another year and still not gotten 1,000. I look back and it was awful nice what the organization did for my 900th [a pregame ceremony].

“The end of last year, we were in a situation where the whole team was on a roll. Darren and certainly Jason both came in and played real well. As much as I wanted to be playing, it would have been hard for me to say I should be in there when the guys were playing so well and the team was on a roll.

“I wanted to play another year, but at the end of last year [General Manager Jack Ferreira] talked to me and said he wasn’t sure. He was quite honest. He didn’t know if they would acquire another young defenseman and whether there would be room for me.”

Even after they decided Ladouceur’s days as a player were done, the Ducks talked to him about becoming a radio analyst, and Disney Sports Enterprises President Tony Tavares assured him there was a job in the organization.

Ladouceur asked to be considered for the assistant coaching job that opened when Al Sims left for San Jose, but it went to Walt Kyle, who had been the coach of minor league affiliate Baltimore and has considerable experience behind the bench, something Ladouceur is getting his first taste of now.

Anaheim Coach Ron Wilson was glad to see Ladouceur at Wednesday’s practice, but he isn’t inclined to waste mental effort wondering if the Ducks could have used him this season.

“Laddy didn’t play the last 14 or 15 games, and that was for a reason,” Wilson said. “He was really struggling. I don’t think we could have offered Laddy anything that would have satisfied him, playing-wise, and our coaching situation was taken care of. I wish we could have found a place for him because he’s such a great guy.”

Wilson remembers certain things about Ladouceur’s performance on the ice fondly too.

“Older defensemen, you know what they’re going to do. Because of Laddy’s experience, he knows shortcuts. He knows how you simplify your game if it’s not going well. He knows, as a defensive defenseman, certain things you do to get back to basics.”

Instead of back to basics, Ladouceur went back to Hartford, where he played for seven seasons.

Coincidentally, the Hartford house he had been unable to sell while in Anaheim finally sold early last summer--a couple months before he took the Whalers’ job.

“That’s hockey,” Ladouceur said.