Ducks Slowly Falling Apart

Left wing Paul Kariya says he wishes to remain a Mighty Duck for as long as it takes to bring a Stanley Cup championship to Anaheim. Right wing Teemu Selanne says he has not asked to be traded. Center Steve Rucchin says he would like to continue skating with Kariya and Selanne. Goaltender Guy Hebert says he would like to finish his career in Orange County.

Pierre Gauthier, Duck president and general manager, says nothing publicly.

Through a team spokesman, Gauthier last week refused to address a number of subjects, including the futures of the franchise’s four pillars, each of whom will be a free agent on July 1, 2002.

Gauthier won’t talk about trade rumors swirling around his club, which went into last weekend’s All-Star break in last place in the Western Conference with a 16-29-6-4 record.

He won’t say whether he’ll keep the Kariya-Rucchin-Selanne line together beyond the March 13 trade deadline. Or whether he’ll deal Selanne, something that has been rumored since Gauthier almost had a deal in place that would have sent the winger to the Carolina Hurricanes for center Keith Primeau last season.

Gauthier won’t speak about his plans for Hebert, an original Duck who has fallen on hard times since signing a three-season contract extension Feb. 4, 1999.

Fewer people than ever are watching the Ducks at the Arrowhead Pond. Attendance is down 22% since the 1997-98 season, falling from an average of 17,020 per game at the 17,174-seat arena to 13,276 this season. Gauthier also has refused to speak about that.

The team is hardly marketed, which means it gets lost in the shuffle of other local college and pro teams. More home games than road games are televised, which makes little sense. The pregame entertainment with the “Wild Wing” mascot grew stale after the second season. Fans appear to be fed up after six consecutive season-ticket price hikes.

“I think in the case of the Ducks, some of what you’re seeing is fans who want to see more from the club,” said Gary Bettman, NHL commissioner, when asked about the team’s attendance troubles.

The Walt Disney Co. is an easy target to blame for the Ducks’ state. Chairman Michael Eisner once was a regular visitor to the Pond but appears to have lost interest since the club took twin public relations hits in 1997 for firing popular coach Ron Wilson and failing to re-sign Kariya in a timely fashion.

It’s believed that Eisner ordered that the name Disney Sports Inc., which manages the Ducks and baseball’s Angels, be changed to Anaheim Sports Inc., in order to distance Disney from the unpredictable business of professional sports. Eisner has been seen at the Pond only a handful of times since Wilson’s firing on May 20, 1997.

Contrary to popular belief, he is spending a great deal of money on the Ducks. The team’s payroll is almost $40 million, which easily puts it among the NHL’s top 10 for the second consecutive season. Whether he is spending his money wisely and on the right players is open to debate.

Tony Tavares, chairman of Anaheim Sports Inc., also is an easy target for criticism. He also has distanced himself publicly from the Ducks, although for a different reason. Several league sources have indicated recently that Gauthier does not report to Tavares and does not like him.

Gauthier berated a Times reporter who wrote of the conflict the day after Gauthier fired Craig Hartsburg as coach and replaced him with Guy Charron on Dec. 14. Gauthier declared at one point that he and Tavares “are the best of friends.”

It’s difficult to pick a white knight in this personality clash. Gauthier is said to be a “control freak,” whose hands-on style leaves little room for input from others within the organization. Tavares, whose professional background is in arena management, is said to be a champion second-guesser of the moves of Gauthier and his predecessor, Jack Ferreira, who served as general manager in the franchise’s first five seasons.

That a dysfunctional management team has produced a dysfunctional product should come as no surprise.

The question is who is going to fire these men?

Eisner is safe as long as Disney’s new Anaheim theme park attracts visitors and the company’s stockholders are pleased. Tavares is thought to be safe because he signed a three-year contract extension in September.

Gauthier’s job could be in jeopardy if the Ducks don’t rally in the season’s final 27 games. But Gauthier, who is believed to have signed a five-year deal when he was hired in the summer of 1998, won’t speak about his future, either.

He is known around the league as “The Ghost” because he disappears and reappears in league press boxes so often that even his secretary has little clue as to his whereabouts.

His stealth management style worked wonders when he was general manager of the Ottawa Senators in the mid-1990s, but the Ducks haven’t improved in his three seasons in Anaheim.

In Ottawa, Gauthier oversaw the development of such young standouts as Daniel Alfredsson, Radek Bonk, Marian Hossa, Wade Redden and Alexei Yashin. With the exception of defenseman Vitaly Vishnevski, young players haven’t developed as quickly in Anaheim.

Indeed, Kariya, Selanne, Rucchin and Hebert have watched players come and go during Gauthier’s tenure, but the team has regressed. The Ducks have hit rock bottom during an injury-marred stretch in which they have only three victories in their last 20 games.

Kariya sat out 16 games because of a broken right foot and Rucchin has been sidelined for all but two games since suffering a broken nose and cheekbone on Nov. 15. At one point recently, four of the Ducks’ top six forwards plus three of their top defensemen were out of action because of injuries.

“Everybody knows this is an injured season,” Gauthier said through a team spokesman.

But injuries only begin to explain the disaster of 2000-01, a season Gauthier promised would be significantly better than 1999-2000, when the team finished last in the Pacific Division and missed the Stanley Cup playoffs.

His “Summer of Solutions” has become a “Winter of Woe.” Center German Titov, signed as a free agent last summer to bolster the second line, has been a bust. He has six goals and 14 points in 48 games and has two seasons left on a three-season deal worth $4.6 million.

Two trades Gauthier touted as upgrades to the roster also failed to help. Having seen enough of winger Andrei Nazarov and defenseman Patrick Traverse, Gauthier admitted failure and sent them packing Nov. 18 to the Boston Bruins for center Samuel Pahlsson. Gauthier remains high on Pahlsson, but it’s difficult to figure out why. Pahlsson has one goal and two points in 32 games as a Duck.

Another deal, to acquire goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, ended up costing the Ducks backup goalie Dominic Roussel. Eager to see if Giguere could play as well as he had in the minors, Gauthier recalled the 23-year-old from Cincinnati of the American Hockey League on Jan. 7.

Gauthier was forced to place Roussel on waivers in order to send him to Cincinnati. Roussel never made it there. The Edmonton Oilers plucked him off waivers. So the Ducks are stuck with Hebert, who is 0-10-2 in his last 12 games, and Giguere, a promising but inexperienced youngster with two victories in nine appearances for Anaheim.

Gauthier’s draft picks from 2000 haven’t evolved into impact players, although Czech winger Petr Tenkrat showed flashes of offensive brilliance in scoring four goals and nine points in his first 11 NHL games. He hasn’t recorded a point in his next 11, however.

Swedish winger Jonas Ronnqvist hasn’t been the tenacious power forward he was said to be.

Roll it all together and, as ESPN commentator Barry Melrose put it during the All-Star telecast over the weekend, “The Ducks are a mess.” Or perhaps more to the point, as Kariya said after a franchise-low crowd of 10,961 watched a 3-0 loss to the Nashville Predators last week, “Why would anyone want to come see that?”

Gauthier has said in the past that he won’t trade Kariya or Selanne. He indicated the two fan-favorites are the keys to building a winning team in Anaheim. Trading them would merely mean that he would be forced to acquire two new superstars, a far more difficult task than dealing Kariya and/or Selanne for a package of faceless, nameless youngsters.

The bottom line is that Gauthier hasn’t supplied Kariya, Selanne, Rucchin and Hebert with the strong supporting cast needed to produce a consistent winner. Where is the world-class center? Or the hard-nosed veteran defenseman? Gauthier has tried to make do with unproven youngsters, lackluster free agents and castoffs other teams didn’t want.

And the franchise is paying the price this season.

Times staff writer Helene Elliott contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

PAUL KARIYA

Signed through

2001-02

$10 million

per season

TEEMU

SELANNE

Signed through

2001-02

$8 million

per season

GUY

HEBERT

Signed through

2001-02

$3.6 million

per season

STEVE

RUCCHIN

Signed through

2001-02

$2.2 million

per season