COMMENTARY : Time to Push the Show Aside

Enough already. Please. I’m begging you.

Can the sideshow. Fire the mascot and the dancers and turn down the music. Send the entertainment director back to Disneyland. Save her salary for next year’s draft picks.

You’ve got the makings of a playoff team here, why not chuck the Vegas act and concentrate on the game?

Your fans will thank you. Players, coaches and management too.

You gave Coach Ron Wilson and his assistants contract extensions. Great. Now give the general manager one. Keep giving the stars-in-the-making incentive-laden contracts. Tell them to produce or they’re gone.

Don’t be afraid to put a little money back into the hockey team.

The sideshow was an interesting diversion for the first year, but it has grown tiresome. Now it’s time to switch to Plan B.

It’s not too late.

Start selling the game and your players.

This season, you put Paul Kariya and Oleg Tverdovsky, two of the best young players in the NHL, on the cover of the media guide. Keep going. Put them on billboards around Orange County. Let people who’ve never been to The Pond know who they are and how good they might be one day. Remember, Wild Wing is scoreless in three seasons.

Stabilize the front office. Give General Manager Jack Ferreira an extension. He has earned it. Keep Pierre Gauthier, his assistant, too.

This isn’t just me saying it. It’s not a purist like Don Cherry, who hasn’t been happy since every game stopped ending with a riot. There are plenty of peeved people at The Pond. Believe me, they know where the Forum is and they know how to get there.

On a recent night, I gathered a small focus group to gauge the level of testiness in the upper reaches of the arena.

Toe and Eddie, friends from college, missed Wild Wing’s belly flop into the flames of Hades on opening night because, well, they’re bright guys and showed up just to watch the game. But I know they saw it on the late-night sports shows. And I know they laughed until their sides hurt.

As season-ticket holders and true believers that hockey is the greatest, fastest, most exciting sport on the globe, Toe and Eddie want to know one thing: Why can’t the Ducks win more?

They don’t care about flying mascots, Trivial Pursuit contests between faceoffs and that relentless arena rock tape you guys bought from K-Tel. They laugh at all that stuff.

Toe called me every day for a year wondering when the Ducks were going to sign Kariya. Eddie just kept muttering that Kariya was no Wayne Gretzky.

I told them both to be patient, management had a plan.

Soon enough they learned what that plan is: fleece the ticket-buying public. A sucker is born every minute, right?

Well, this public has grown tired of the lounge act. So knock it off.

You’re ruining the game.

The NBA last month issued an edict to its teams: turn down the volume on the tunes during timeouts, cut out the sound effects after missed free throws by opponents and during the action. In Charlotte, N.C., the Hornets played a tape of bees buzzing. In Indiana, the Pacers played a tape of cars whizzing around a track.

Pure noise. Utter nonsense.

The NBA pulled the plug, saying such stuff “offended the senses.”

Right.

Give your fans some credit. They want to watch hockey, so let them.

At the moment, it’s difficult to see the game through the relentless beat of the music and giveaways and contests and screaming sideshow barkers and dancers and mascots and, jeez, who’s playing on that line with Kariya, anyway?

Disney’s spin doctors say it’s a way to give the fans a good time, more bang for their buck. What it really means is if they play it loud enough the fans might forgive and forget a bad Duck performance.

Well, the fans are wise to that stuff. They knew the difference between offsides and icing right from the start. They understand your power play isn’t so hot. They know which opposing player to taunt and which Ducks to applaud.

So start treating them right.

Give ‘em hockey. Good hockey.