Hartsburg Is Defiant, if Not Defensive, About His Critics

Little veins quiver on Craig Hartsburg’s neck. His Mighty Ducks have lost. Again. In front of a crowd that resembles the racks after the winter white sales--reduced in numbers, leftovers hanging crookedly off their seats, barely able to muster up a peep.

Ottawa completes a 2-0 victory and the Ducks tumble into 10th place in the Western Conference standings, a place where they would be left out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Hartsburg stands outside the locker room.

He is defiant. He is angry. He says he is amused to be reading lately how the Ducks have become sad and dull and how his stringent insistence on defensive hockey has caused offensive geniuses Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne to be rendered boring.

But Hartsburg is not amused, no matter what he says. He laughs, but the sound is not pleasant.

“That is totally false. That is a lie,” Hartsburg says. “You won’t see a quote from one of our players complaining about our system. I’ll take the heat. I’m happy to take the heat off our players. That’s what I’m paid to do.

“But it is a lie to say we’re trying to be a defensive team. That is just a lie. I’m not going to lower myself and get into this. But we don’t want to be a defensive team. We want to be a good team.”

Hartsburg is clenching, then unclenching. His fists. His jaw. You wonder what’s happening inside. His eyebrows quiver.

Last season, the Ducks were a happy surprise. Hartsburg, the new coach, was the calming presence, the man of precision who gave a messy team order, who provided sanity and a sense of discipline. He told the players what to do and the players were happy to be told. A year earlier, the Ducks had missed the playoffs and floundered through a season in which it seemed there was a new plan every day. Or no plan.

So, OK, things are going badly now. The Ducks have the worst record in their division. And it is Hartsburg’s fault. That’s what is being said.

Selanne, who led the NHL in goals last season, is almost 50% behind his 1998-99 pace. Selanne, a funny man, a man of good humor and goodwill, seems strangely subdued.

This is Hartsburg’s fault, the critics say. He is playing dump-the-puck hockey and this is like telling Mozart to play the scales and nothing else.

“I feel bad for Teemu,” Hartsburg says. “Teemu is a great player and a great guy and I want Teemu to do well. I want Paul to do well, and it will come for them. No doubt in my mind. It will come for them.”

Are the Ducks different than they were last year?

“Yes,” Hartsburg says, “we are different. We are a more aggressive hockey team.”

That attendance is down, that the fans who come to the games seem less engaged by what’s happening on the ice than by the giant video screens when players give answers to silly questions such as “Wilma or Betty?” and five or six Ducks pick Betty Rubble over Wilma Flintstone--this seems to indicate the Ducks are not entertaining. And it’s all because of that dirty word.

Defense.

“Ottawa is a great defensive team,” Hartsburg says, “but I don’t call what they do defensive hockey. They skate well, they play with the puck well. They are solid, solid.”

There is an inclination to bury the Ducks, to say they just aren’t good enough. But then you watch a game like the 2-0 loss Wednesday to Ottawa, when the Ducks seemed to do everything right, when they played hard and smart, when they had fistfuls of good, head-on shots that just bounced the wrong way, and you can’t help but imagine that soon, any day now, the Ducks will win five or six or seven games in a row and pop up back near the top of their division.

Hartsburg’s eyes grow wide when he is told there is sentiment to write off this team now. He laughs again, the same joyless laugh that came then he was asked if it bothered him at all, this criticism of his system, of his coaching. He finds it “amusing” again that anyone would want to write off this season.

Still, the Ducks haven’t won in the year 2000 yet. Every home game seems to have fewer and fewer fans in the seats. It was OK to be at the bottom of the Pacific Division when you were ahead of most of the teams in the other two Western Conference divisions, but now the Ducks have been passed by Calgary and Edmonton. By winning Thursday night in Nashville, the Canucks moved within two points of the Ducks. Let too many teams go ahead and it becomes so much harder to pass them all and get back into the playoffs.

“If we just keep working hard,” Hartsburg said, “things are going to come around. I believe that. The guys have to believe that.”

But do they?

“Yes,” Hartsburg said. His eyebrows were in a bunch, his fists were in a ball. “The guys believe it.”

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