For One Night, Anaheim Fans Are Rewarded

It was opening night at the Arrowhead Pond, the ninth opening night for the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

The crowd was bigger than the Mighty Ducks organization deserved.

The enthusiasm was not undeserved by the players or the coach.

The 2-1 Anaheim victory over the Washington Capitals was undeniably deserved.

Steve Rucchin, the quiet center, scored first for the Ducks. It was Rucchin’s first goal in nearly a year. Rucchin sat out most of last season with the aftereffects of a concussion. He was dizzy and sick. He had sinus problems and ear problems. His career could have been finished. Rucchin thought it was for a while. Rucchin’s smile, his upraised arms, the way he skated in a fast circle after that score, it was worth the price of admission.

Paul Kariya, stoic and expressionless and always loyal to his bosses, deserves to play in front of a big crowd. Kariya was the instigator of the Ducks’ game winner Friday. His driving slap shot ricocheted off Washington goalie Olie Kolzig and onto the stick of Jason York.

Gooaaal.

Sometime, maybe soon, Kariya will want to pursue a playoff run for a team that is capable of making a playoff run. It would be too sad if Kariya’s talent, his cleverness with the puck, his ability to drop a puck off, without a backward glance, to a teammate behind him, his speed, his absolute love for hockey, were never rewarded with, at the least, a serious run at the Stanley Cup.

Bryan Murray, the new Anaheim coach, is a man of quiet class and vast hockey knowledge. After spending the last 20 years as a coach or general manager in the NHL, Murray doesn’t need to rebuild a team that has been picked by nearly every expert to miss the playoffs. Again. But Murray stands behind the Anaheim bench, straight-backed and serious, his white hair and resume offering the feeling that the Ducks are in good hands. So applaud Murray.

It is opening night at the Pond for a team that is nearly invisible to Southern Californians, all of them except the optimistic 16,219 who came to this game against the Capitals.

Maybe they are hoping that the Ducks can become the Oakland A’s of hockey, that the Ducks, a team that is a bad second in its market, that is proud to have a payroll lower than most, a team in the suburbs that was conceived as the big marketing tool for a movie, might still become a winning team.

Maybe they are hoping the Ducks will outwork all the other, fancier, higher-paid opponents. Maybe they are hoping the Ducks will forge an identity as overachievers. Maybe they are hoping that the teams such as the Capitals, who could spend the money to bring in Jaromir Jagr, which has the coach, Ron Wilson, whom Ducks fans still revere, will turn into the hockey version of the Dodgers or Mets--profligate spenders with no playoff return on the money.

The Ducks don’t know how lucky they are to have these 16,219 fans because a team no one cares about is worse than useless.

On this night the paying customer got his money’s worth.

There was a touching pregame moment when the Mater Dei choir sang “America the Beautiful” while a large American flag was unfurled. As the flag was slowly stretched to its full size, players, one by one, from each team skated out to hold onto the flag.

The moment was choreographed by the Disney people, who own the Ducks and who know how to give us a patriotic opener. But the moment was made special by the hockey players who so sweetly skated to the flag.

Now there is a season to be played. The Ducks have begun a stretch where they play 12 of 14 games at the Pond. If this is a bad homestand, if this team appears to be headed to a third consecutive season of no playoffs, the Pond will be host to empty seats and silence.

“It was a pretty emotional evening starting with the national anthem,” Rucchin said. “To get a goal again, it was great. The first one is always the toughest and hopefully I can forget about everything that happened last year.”

This would be a good theme for the Ducks. Forget about everything that happened last year. And the year before. And the year before that. Take the night’s emotions and multiply them.

Because if there are more nights like opening night, more nights where the Ducks work harder, play smarter, have Steve Shields, the goalie, make all the important stops, have Kariya carry the puck to all the right places, the 16,000 won’t turn to 8,000 and the sound will get louder.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.