Man Behind the Mask--and Ducks’ Playoff Bid

Craig Hartsburg’s eyebrows don’t twitch when he coaches the Mighty Ducks. His lips don’t quiver, much less spread into a smile. His face doesn’t turn red in anger or joy. He doesn’t pound on the glass. If he sweats, no one can tell.

We have come to know Hartsburg as the man with the straight back and the straight face behind the bench of his feisty, young, still alive team.

The Ducks play the Detroit Red Wings, the defending Stanley Cup champions, Wednesday night in the first round of the NHL playoffs.

Hartsburg, 39, may not be the only reason for the Ducks’ success, but he deserves credit in large measure. He has taken a team that seemed hopeless and humiliated and brought it most unexpectedly into the playoffs.

He came to town less than a year ago as second choice, not hired until after a minor-league coach turned the job down.

He came to town more to snickers than to cheers because he had been fired not much more than six weeks before the Ducks hired him.

Fired because the Chicago Blackhawks seemed hopeless and humiliated and were out of the playoffs too.

Often you hear the questions. Does Hartsburg ever smile? Does he ever laugh?

Yes, says Hartsburg’s wife, Peggy, whom he met in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, when he was 16 and 500 miles away from home. Peggy said she probably was the one “who chased Craig because he was so shy.”

She laughs easily over the telephone from Glenview, Ill., a Chicago suburb where Peggy and Katie, their 16-year-old daughter, are living until Katie finishes high school. Son Chris is a freshman hockey player at Colorado College.

Peggy says Craig laughs a lot too. At funny movies or books. That he will smile all the time during the off-season. That he will frown or get angry too.

Craig’s mom, May, remembers how he cried when he was 15 and had gone off to play Junior A hockey in Guelph, Ontario, about 70 miles from Stratford, Ontario, where Craig grew up with two brothers and a sister.

May says Craig called in tears and said he wanted to come home.

“His father got on the phone,” May says, “and told Craig that if, in a month, he still felt the same way, then Craig could come home. But he also told Craig how important this was and that Craig should give it a fair shot.”

In a month, Craig didn’t come home.

It was Bill--who is 70 now and says he never puts on the skates anymore but would like to--who first put a pair of skates on Craig when Craig was 18 months old. Bill played hockey too.

“Junior A of course,” he says, “and then in the American League in Philadelphia and in San Francisco and Portland and Vancouver in the Pacific Coast League.”

In those days of only six NHL teams, this means Bill was probably good enough to be playing in the NHL today.

While Bill put all his sons into skates as babies, only Craig stood up and kept on skating. Craig says that he remembers that as young as 3, all he “ever wanted was to play in the NHL.” Bill says that by the time Craig was 6, Bill knew he had talent.

When Bill had retired from playing, he invested in two small hotels. May remembers that Craig would destroy the baseboards and wake up the guests by using the long hotel hallways as an indoor rink during the winters.

May also remembers how Craig would play outside by himself on the small pond his dad built and carefully groomed. “He would play until he was frozen,” May says, “then he would come inside until he thawed out, and then he would go outside again.”

Hartsburg played for 10 years for the Minnesota North Stars, helping them into the Stanley Cup finals once. His teammates considered him one of the top four or five defensemen in the league.

Basil McRae, who played with Hartsburg in Minnesota and for him in Minnesota and Chicago, says Hartsburg was a popular teammate. Why? “His work ethic,” McRae says. “His honesty. His decency.”

After Minnesota, McRae played in St. Louis. Hartsburg had gone on to coach. McRae had just been cut by St. Louis and decided to retire.

“I got a call from Craig,” McRae says, “and he asked me to come up and play for him in Chicago. He was going out on a limb for me. After about two months, Craig called me into the office. He looked me in the eye and he told me straight--he told me it was time for me to retire.

“That wasn’t easy. We were friends. Craig knew how painful it is to face retirement. He could have easily had the GM do it. Or he could have said it wasn’t his call or it was a money thing. But Craig wouldn’t do that. He told me straight and I knew then that it was time to retire.”

On the day that Wayne Gretzky retired--”I played with him in juniors,” Hartsburg says as he watches Gretzky on TV--Hartsburg says that his own retirement because of injuries at 29 was the hardest thing he has experienced in hockey. Harder, even, than being fired by the Blackhawks.

“I wasn’t ready,” Hartsburg says. “I’m still not ready. I’d love to be out there on the ice. But for two years I had played with injuries. I had to do it.”

Don’t think, though, that being fired was easy. “You go through stages,” Hartsburg says. “First, I felt awful. Not for me. I felt like I’d let my family down, my team down, that I’d let ownership down. I hadn’t done what was expected of me.

“But then I got angry. That’s what you do. Then you get depressed.”

Craig’s dad, Bill, says the day Craig was fired, “he called me up and said, ‘Don’t worry Dad, I’ll get another job. Sooner than you think.’ ”

But Bill also said Craig would not have taken just any job. “The thing people don’t know,” Bill says, “is the burning desire that Craig has to win the Stanley Cup. He didn’t do it as a player. He means to do it as a coach. He would only have taken on a team that he feels has that potential.”

So there.

When you ask Hartsburg who his coaching mentor is, who he models himself after, he says simply, “My father.”

“All the coaches in the league know hockey,” Hartsburg says. “What’s important is learning how to deal with the players, with the personalities. That’s what’s important.”

Hartsburg has brought to the Ducks a sense of purpose. Of decency and honesty. Of refusing to be too high or too low. Of accepting nothing less than full effort.

His team is coming to understand about that burning desire to win. His father says that it is best not to talk to Craig after a loss. “It was like that when he played; it’s like that now,” Bill says.

Many say the Ducks won’t win a single game in this best-of-seven series against Detroit. So you can be sure that there will be some nights when Bill is not going to be talking to Craig.

You’d never know that, would you? But maybe we should learn. It seems Hartsburg is going to be around for a while.

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Times sports columnist Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com

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* UPS AND DOWNS: The Ducks went on a roller-coaster ride to the Stanley Cup playoffs. D1