This Latest Deal Just a Setup for the Ducks’ Great One

The Ducks traded Bob Corkum to the Flyers Tuesday for a minor leaguer and a future draft pick, which, bottom line, means the Ducks traded a player who wasn’t helping them in ’96 for two players who won’t help them until ’97.

This is not the playoff-push blockbuster Duck fans were hoping for, unless this trade leads to a bigger one, and I believe it does.

How does “And starting at center for the Mighty Ducks, No. 99, WAYNE GRETZKY” sound to you?

Quietly, surreptitiously, the Ducks and the Kings have been laying groundwork in recent days to pull the Big One for the Great One.

The evidence is overwhelming:

1. Gretzky told the Kings late last month to improve the team or he’s walking. Since then, King General Manager Sam McMaster traded Gretzky’s best friend on the team, Rick Tocchet, a guy with a chronically bad back, for Kevin Stevens, a guy with a worse back. As of Tuesday morning, the Kings were tied for eighth in the Western Conference with Winnipeg and slipping, having won only once in their previous 12 games. That lone victory came at home. By a single goal. Against the Ducks.

2. After that game, Gretzky had this to say about the Ducks: “We know that every time we play them, it’s going to be a very emotional, intense game. They’re the new kids on the block and they want to knock us off.” Read into that what you will. Me, this is what I see: “Those new kids on the block are pretty feisty. I’m impressed. All they need to get over the top is a veteran, calming, playmaking presence like myself. Let’s make this thing happen, shall we?”

3. Stevens’ back can blow at any minute. Tony Granato could be out the rest of the season. The Kings need bodies. The Ducks don’t have many all-stars, but bodies? They have more of those than they know what to do with.

4. Gretzky wants to leave the Kings but doesn’t want to leave the palatial new home he had built in Thousand Oaks. Solution? Anaheim, of course.

5. Gretzky says he wants to play two or three more years and play for a team with a chance to win the Stanley Cup. Two years takes the Ducks to the end of their oft-discussed Five-Year Plan. The timing is uncanny.

6. Once, it was impossible to picture Gretzky wearing anything so ridiculous as a Mighty Ducks uniform, but that was before he was seen in public in one of the Kings’ new third jerseys.

7. The Ducks also introduced a third jersey and immediately put them on sale at Disney stores at $95 per unit. If they sell 70,000 of them, and they will, the jerseys will pay Gretzky’s salary for the ‘96-97 season.

8. Gretzky and Paul Kariya recently spent a weekend together in Boston for the NHL All-Star game. What do you suppose they talked about?

9. The Ducks haven’t acquired a single player anyone had previously heard of in nearly a year. Obviously, they’ve been saving their money for something.

10. The Ducks just traded Corkum. So, they need a center.

Compensation won’t be a problem. Using the Tocchet and Alexei Zhitnik trades as a gauge, McMaster will accept just about anything, as long as it’s breathing.

(Ability to stand upright no longer a requisite.)

But, McMaster will want to make it look good, at least to sell it to the fans, so the Ducks will have to give him numbers. Maybe three players, two draft picks and a few million dollars. The Ducks have draft picks and money to burn, so that part of the deal is done.

Players?

OK. How about Patrik Carnback? He’s young, he’s fast, he can score and he just signed with Cologne of the German Elite League. There’s a very good chance McMaster hasn’t heard yet.

Besides Carnback, how about . . . say . . . Dave Karpa? McMaster traded for Karpa last February, had him on the roster for three days, then got scared off by Karpa’s bad wrist--a pre-existing condition, it turned out--and voided the deal. So Karpa went back to Quebec and was traded instead to the Ducks, who played him 26 times the rest of the season and got some fairly productive hockey out of him. McMaster got skewered for nixing a trade that wound up helping a division rival, so this is his opportunity to make amends.

The rest is in the hands of Duck GM Jack Ferreira. Literally. The Ducks’ 1995-96 media guide is in Ferreira’s hands, and to consummate the deal, he must fling the book high into the air. When it lands, opened and face down, McMaster can have whichever player is featured on that page.

Done.

Ferreira bends over and picks up the media guide. It is opened to page 80.

Alex Hicks.

Hicks has been somewhat useful since his recall from Baltimore, so Ferreira proposes a re-flip. Or two out of three. McMaster admits that he frankly does not know this Hicks person, so he quickly agrees.

This time the book lands on page 46.

Steven King.

McMaster is thrilled. “Oh, yes!,” he exclaims. “I’ve heard of him! Not only that, I have enjoyed many of his novels!”

The deal could be wrapped up, just like that.

Everybody wins, nobody loses.

The Kings are happy, because they get some players and some dollars for Gretzky instead of nothing, which is the alternative when free agent Gretzky goes franchise-shopping this summer.

Gretzky is happy, because in Kariya, he finally has a teammate capable of receiving one of his passes and directing it toward the opposition’s net.

Kariya is happy, because the pressure will be off. He goes from “The Next Gretzky” to “Plays Next To Gretzky.”

Ron Wilson is happy, because he now has a player capable of keeping him employed until the end of the Five-Year Plan.

Duck fans are happy, because for 2 1/2 seasons they’ve been shelling out Gretzky money to watch Oleg Mikulchik’s performance.

And the Ducks are happy, even at $6 million or $7 million a season, because Gretzky dolls in Disney stores is a gold mine just begging to be tapped. And this June, when the Ducks announce their annual ticket-price hike, Orange County will be too blissed out to even notice.