Page Sees Sun on Cloudy Day

The afternoon was gray and dreary and the forecast called for snow, but Mighty Duck Coach Pierre Page still had a cheerful homecoming here Thursday.

He has no hard feelings for the city, its people or its hockey team.

“I’m going back to a city I love,” he said earlier this week. “I started my career there. My daughter was born there. I have a lot of good friends there.”

Page spent two seasons coaching the Calgary Flames, squeezing the most from the least. They weren’t easy years. There were feuds with star players, most notably Theoren Fleury, and more losses than victories.

But with a season left on his contract, Page last spring asked for a two-year extension.

He believed the Flames needed three years to complete a turnaround and wanted to be the one to accomplish the task. He wanted a long-range commitment.

Calgary, playing a roster loaded with inexperienced players, was 34-37-11 in 1995-96 and 32-41-9 last season under Page.

Calgary General Manager Al Coates offered only one more season, so Page bolted for Anaheim. After a summer-long dispute over compensation, Page finally became the Duck coach Aug. 9.

“My wife kept waking me up at 4 a.m., asking me, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ ” said Page, who began his NHL coaching career as an assistant to Al MacNeil in Calgary in 1980. “I told her that I’ve always bounced back. I felt strong about certain things. It was too tough of a challenge to try to do in only two years.”

Page also walked away from a plum job as coach and general manager of the Quebec Nordiques (now the Colorado Avalanche), and after a year out of work landed the Flames’ job.

The stress got to him in Quebec, no question.

There was Eric Lindros’ refusal to play in Quebec, a yearlong holdout and an eventual trade that helped turn the Nordiques into a quality team. And there also was a much-publicized blowup with standout winger Mats Sundin on the Nordiques’ bench during a playoff game.

Little changed in Calgary. Fleury held out. Money was tight. Rookies were plentiful. Memories of the Flames’ Stanley Cup season of 1988-89 had faded.

“I thought they needed three years to straighten everything out,” Page said of asking for a two-year extension. “It was better for me to go. It was better for the team. It was important for the GM to hire his own coach.”

Coates hired Brian Sutter to replace Page, but so far the results have not changed in Calgary. The Flames are 3-10-3 going into Page’s return tonight.

The Ducks, despite playing without unsigned free agent Paul Kariya, are off to the best start in the franchise’s history at 6-5-4.

“I think he’s done an excellent job,” team captain Teemu Selanne said of Page, who replaced Ron Wilson. “He’s got good hockey sense. He’s brought with him a lot of good ideas. You can tell he’s been around hockey a long time.”

He’s also a passionate teacher, although sometimes he seems more like an absent-minded professor.

“As long as he stops calling me Sundin, everything will be OK,” Selanne said.

Sundin? A flashback to Quebec perhaps?

“Three or four times on the bench last week against Toronto, he called out our line--[Joe] Sacco, [Sean] Pronger and Sundin,” Selanne said, laughing. “Sometimes Pierre is really into the game. He’s so focused on the game and matchups that his mind is elsewhere.”

Page also has been known to get so excited in conversations that he will start speaking French, his native tongue. Page’s sometimes unorthodox style has confounded more than a few people over the years, including several in Calgary.

Fleury was unavailable to comment about Page’s tenure with the Flames, but others were willing to speak about the past.

“I had no problem with Pierre,” Calgary defenseman Tommy Albelin told a Calgary reporter this week. “Differences? Well, Brian gets his point across better. But they’re both pretty intense.”

Sutter said right from the start that things in Calgary “were unacceptable the last few years.”

A thinly veiled swipe at Page? Sutter said this week it was not.

“I have the utmost respect for Pierre,” Sutter said. “I thought he did a hell of a job with the hockey club he had here. My comment about what went on here was by no means a reflection on him.

“Things have to be better around here. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.”

In other words, don’t look for a lot of nastiness on the ice tonight. The Ducks and Flames are Pacific Division rivals, to be sure, but it figures to be fairly tame stuff.

“Too many good things have happened to me in Calgary to try to create things,” Page said.