Ducking Responsibility Not a Game Wilson Plays

I had heard that Ron Wilson had been uncharacteristically snippy and short-tempered lately, that the Mighty Duck coach was not having a particularly happy holiday. Behind his back, people were calling him Scrooge McDuck. I was sorry to hear it.

Curious what might be getting the coach’s goat, I went to see his Ducks for myself. Well, what I saw explained a lot. In a game against the Kings, a team that Anaheim humbled more than once in Wilson’s first two seasons behind the bench, the Ducks looked so flat, so sluggish, so distracted, especially on defense, that, well, Wilson said it better than I can.

“We’re a very fragile team right now,” he said. “Somebody makes a mistake early on, and we just seem to crumble.

“I had a conniption right after the first period, but it didn’t matter. Soon as we fell behind, we started to feel sorry for ourselves. Some of the guys gave up.

“It’s the same old thing, over and over again. I’m telling you, it’s Groundhog Day. There’s a tunnel vision that’s almost indescribable. We’re having trouble making 10-foot passes. You can’t win with people like that.”

I know some people’s first reaction will be that the Mighty Ducks are still fresh out of the egg, that they are only in their third NHL season and should be entitled to flail a little.

That argument won’t wash, however, which is why Wilson won’t use it. Hockey’s other expansion team, the Florida Panthers, have lost only eight of their first 35 games this season. They have a record superior to the last two Stanley Cup champions, the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils, and might be the dominant club in the league right now, along with Detroit.

Meanwhile, the reeling Mighty Ducks have dropped five games in a row. They haven’t won on the road in their last seven attempts. And they are about to embark on a January schedule that has them playing at The Pond only twice the entire month.

No wonder Wilson has gone off the deep end, a couple of times.

He snapped his cap early in the game at the Forum, yanking goaltender Mikhail Shtalenkov right off the ice, partway into the second period. It wasn’t one of those Patrick Roy things, where seven or eight shots had already gone into the net, but Wilson wasn’t going to stand around and wait. As soon as he saw Pat Conacher of the Kings beat the goalie, short-handed, Wilson gave him the hook.

I can understand a man pulling his goalie. Wilson must sense that if Anaheim keeps playing this way, somebody’s going to pull the coach.

Nothing he saw pleased him. Oh, the forwards, they were less to blame than the others, but on power plays, Wilson said, “Everybody’s trying to be too cute, instead of just being basic. I’m not going to stand there watching guys on breakaways flipping the puck behind their backs.”

Then there was that Duck defense.

“Our defense,” Wilson said, and I could see him nearly want to put quotation marks around the word, “had about as bad a night as you could possibly have, at this level.

“I’m finding out who can’t play. We want to be in the playoffs. We want to be a class organization. But some of these guys aren’t capable of playing on a first or second line, or even a third line. We’re using guys who belong on a fourth or fifth line, if they belong here at all.”

Were that not embarrassing enough, the Ducks were playing an L.A. team that was without Jari Kurri, without Rob Blake, a team that is having no better than a break-even season itself. There will be a rematch Sunday afternoon at The Pond.

Anaheim should be better by now. At one point this season, the Ducks had 11 victories and 11 defeats. Now they are doing so poorly, they trail even Edmonton in the standings.

The team has had to overcome a couple of big handicaps, in my opinion, like waiting for Paul Kariya to show up and having Kevin Gilmore as director of hockey operations. The good news here is, they do have Kariya.

As for Wilson, he will go down in history as the original Mighty Duck coach. In the Disney film from which the team drew its name, Emilio Estevez had to coach a team that was something of a motley crew. Life is continuing to imitate art.

“I’ve got to do something to shake things up,” Wilson said.

“We have injuries for now, but at some point I’m going to have the opportunity to bench some people who deserve to be benched. A coach’s hammer is ice time. That’s the hard part now. You limit their play, you suffer the consequences. But I won’t have to play some of these people forever.”

Maybe by next Groundhog Day, he will have the team he wants.

“When you’re in a rut like the one we’re in, you tend to feel a little sorry for yourself,” Wilson said, assessing his situation rather than stalking off into the night without comment, as he did after one recent game. “We’ve got people here now with almost a loser’s mentality. I’m not going to stand here and take that, let me tell you.”