And Finally . . . It’s Hartsburg as Ducks Coach

The Mighty Ducks hired Craig Hartsburg as coach Tuesday, capping a dizzying summer of comings and goings in the team’s executive offices.

Hartsburg, 39, replaces Pierre Page, fired five weeks ago in the wake of the worst season in the team’s five-year history. The Ducks also fired assistant coaches Don Hay and Walt Kyle eight weeks ago and hired Pierre Gauthier as team president last week.

“Now we’re going forward with a management group and a coach in place,” Gauthier said Tuesday, his sixth day on the job. “I think our fans can look forward to us building the organization the rest of the summer.”

And for years to come, Gauthier said. Never again, he vowed, will the Ducks fire a coach 10 months after hiring him, as they did with Page. Gauthier, who signed a five-year contract, agreed to a three-year contract with Hartsburg.

“We’re not hiring a coach to keep for one year,” Gauthier said.

While the Ducks let Page dangle for two months after the end of a lousy season, the Chicago Blackhawks dismissed Hartsburg one week after the team missed the playoffs for the first time since 1969. Hartsburg went 104-102-40 in three seasons with the Blackhawks, his first job as an NHL head coach.

Hartsburg played 10 seasons as a defenseman in the NHL, all with the Minnesota North Stars, and appeared in three All-Star games. Ducks General Manager Jack Ferreira, then the general manager in Minnesota, hired Hartsburg as an assistant coach immediately upon his retirement in 1989.

He Didn’t Think Twice

With the executive shuffle complete and the surrounding tension dissipated, laughter returned to the Arrowhead Pond for the first time this summer. Ferreira, sporting a tie dotted with smiling Mickey Mouses, chuckled as he intercepted a question at Tuesday’s news conference asking Hartsburg how he felt about being the team’s second choice. “I wasn’t even my wife’s first choice,” Ferreira said, “and we’ve been married 12 years.”

Hartsburg spoke up immediately.

“I was my wife’s first choice,” he said.

Seriously, Hartsburg said, he didn’t think twice about accepting a position that minor-league coach Butch Goring rejected. Goring, angered by what he said was the Ducks’ take-it-or-leave-it stance to what he considered an unfairly-low salary offer, left the job for someone else to take.

Hartsburg took it, filling the last available NHL coaching vacancy for marginally more than the $400,000 per season that Goring declined.

“When you get the opportunity, you should feel fortunate,” Hartsburg said. “To me, there’s no minuses about being in the National Hockey League. . . . I think it’s a privilege to coach in the National Hockey League. No matter what team you’re coaching, it’s a privilege.”

Out to Make Amends

If the Ducks repeat last season’s performance, Hartsburg may not consider himself quite so fortunate. The Ducks failed to develop depth beyond superstars Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne. Although Selanne tied for the league lead with 52 goals, the Ducks crashed as Kariya missed all but 22 games, the first 32 in a contract dispute and the last 28 after suffering a concussion.

While the executives change, the player roster remains largely the same.

“If we make a couple more moves this summer, we can show people we are trying to make amends for last year,” Ferreira said.

But, with most of the league’s top free agents already signed elsewhere, the Ducks must hope for the return to health of Kariya and goaltender Guy Hebert and the development of young players, including Frank Banham, Matt Cullen and Josef Marha.

“Building with young players is right up my alley,” Hartsburg said. “I enjoy working with young players. I know I can make them better.”

Tony Tavares, who oversees the Ducks and Angels as president of Disney’s Anaheim Sports division and who directed Gauthier to replace him as the executive voice of the Ducks, did not appear at Tuesday’s news conference.

Gauthier not only appeared at the news conference but, four hours earlier, at the Orange County sports newsmakers luncheon. With Gauthier charged with putting a friendlier face on the organization, he first announced Hartsburg’s hiring to the businesspeople eating chicken and mashed potatoes, not to the media.

“You want to communicate things to fans,” he said.

* TOUGH JOB: Hartsburg will be asked to win with essentially the same team that failed last season. C1