Enforcer Nazarov Coming to Anaheim

The Mighty Ducks got a little bigger and a lot meaner Tuesday when they acquired right wing Andrei Nazarov from Calgary for defenseman prospect Jordan Leopold.

Nazarov, 6 feet 5 and 234 pounds, was a first-round pick (10th overall) by the San Jose Sharks in 1992. His NHL career has been checkered with ejections and suspensions.

Nazarov, 26, had 10 goals and a career-high 32 points last season. The Ducks also received a second-round pick in the 2001 draft.

“We wanted to be bigger up front this year,” Duck General Manager Pierre Gauthier said. “He’s had some ups and downs in his career, but we got him at the right age.”

The downs have been well documented.

Nazarov, who will make $925,000 this season, has 699 penalty minutes in 321 games during his career. He had 222 in 60 games while playing for San Jose in 1996-97.

He was suspended seven games and fined $1,000 for cross-checking Colorado’s Cam Russell in 1998-99. He was suspended six games for shoving a linesman in 1996-97. He was suspended four games and fined $500 for head butting another player in 1994-95.

Other incidents include sucker-punching Florida’s Rob Niedermayer during a 1998 exhibition game and starting a bench-clearing brawl against the Kings in 1997. Eight players were ejected.

Of course, those things made Nazarov more appealing to the Ducks.

Asked about Nazarov’s volatile nature, Gauthier said it is “not necessarily a bad thing.”

On the other hand, Nazarov seems to have mellowed . . . some. He had only 78 penalty minutes in 76 games last season. Still, his reputation is known throughout the league. Nazarov claimed he was confronted by six Philadelphia Flyers following a game in 1998.

“There is as an edge to him,” Gauthier said.

Nazarov’s 10 goals last season were the most he scored since he had 12 with San Jose in 1996-97.

“He is going to help us immensely,” Coach Craig Hartsburg said. “He’s a big guy with skills. He’s a great addition.”

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The Ducks wanted to live large this season, and acquiring Nazarov was another step in that direction.

“You look around the league and you see the guys who are scoring goals in front of the net,” right wing Teemu Selanne said. “They are all big. We scored a lot of pretty goals last season. We want to score more garbage goals this season.”

To fill that need, the Ducks have beefed up. They signed free-agent center German Titov as the centerpiece, but they also drafted Jonas Ronnqvist, a 27-year-old right wing from Sweden.

Titov is 6 feet 1, 201 pounds and Ronnqvist is 6-1, 200. Now add in Nazarov, who is 6-5, 234.

“You’re going to see some highlight goals, but the majority of the goals scored in this league are scored by people hanging around the net,” Hartsburg said.

The Ducks know what they have in Titov, and think they know in Nazarov’s case. But Ronnqvist is still an unknown.

He had 15 goals and 39 points in 49 games with Lulea HF of the Swedish Elite League last year. He has shown some flashes of that during workouts.

“He is going to fit in well,” Hartsburg said. “We have to be patient. He still needs to learn the league. But this is a guy who is going to help us.”

The Ducks had instant success with defenseman Niclas Havelid, who was also from Sweden, last season. Havelid made an some-what easy jump from the Swedish Elite League to the NHL.

If Ronnqvist can do the same, the Ducks will be that much bigger.

“We wanted to get some big guys with skills,” Gauthier said. “Look at the people we lost, Ted Donato (5-10, 180) and Kip Miller (5-10, 190). They were good players, but small. We replaced them with big guys.”

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The Ducks will be faced with several questions after their last two exhibition games this weekend.

Antti-Jussi Niemi, a 23-year-old defenseman from Finland, is making himself a problem. Niemi seemed ticketed for Cincinnati, the Ducks’ minor league affiliate, when training camp began. His play, though, may change that.

“He really handles the puck well,” Hartsburg said. “He’s not going to make flashy plays, but he puts to the puck in the right place.”